The last few years have been fairly difficult for the healthcare sector, which has suffered the most cyberattacks in 2024 compared to other industries. It’s a constant reminder of how vulnerable and unprotected personal medical data is.
Amid these scenarios, the blockchain market in healthcare is booming: it was valued at $7.04 billion in 2023, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of an impressive 63% from 2024 to 2030, which will allow the industry to grow significantly and find new solutions to old problems.
The Challenges Healthcare Is Facing in 2025
Healthcare is one of the most significant and developed industries, but it still has a lot of issues. Costs that keep rising, shortages in the workforce, and the need to adapt to rapid digitalization have all been affecting the field. Currently, it’s also facing cybersecurity and compliance issues.
Escalating Number of Cyberthreats
For starters, healthcare is among the biggest targets for cybercriminals. Sensitive patient data (including social security numbers, addresses, and other personal information), outdated digital infrastructure that can’t compete with the newest cyber tools, and a growing network of third-party vendors create an ideal situation for breaches.
Supply Chain Integrity
The healthcare industry involves multiple third parties that operate within the same supply chain: suppliers, distributors, and regulators. They are often located in different countries, which makes it difficult to keep the supply process efficient. It can create issues, from product delivery delays to compromised quality and drug contamination.
Regulatory Compliance and Auditability
The medical system is highly regulated by many different laws and regulations. It is subject to both local and international regulations, like HIPAA, GDPR, and others. That’s why healthcare organizations are always under administrative pressure and are prone to audits and inspections. At the same time, a lot of them lack transparency and straightforwardness, which makes them vulnerable to fines, litigation, and reputational damage.
Costly Administrative Processes
Besides the clinical side of the system, such as patient treatment, healthcare also has a lot of administrative functions. Things like scheduling and appointment management, patient record management, billing, insurance processing, as well as communication with patients and their relatives, are not only time-consuming but also use a lot of financial resources.
Limited Patient Control Over Their Data
There are numerous reasons why patients have limited access and control over their data. Some of them are rational and include the duty to protect sensitive information. However, others, depending on the medical system, are plain random. This leads to a lack of transparency, an inability to retrieve important patient information without being physically present at the facility, and difficulties in revoking consent.
Counterfeit Drugs and Medical Devices
Counterfeit drugs and medical devices are a serious problem, both for healthcare providers and patients. They are not only ineffective but can also be harmful and lead to serious health issues and increased drug resistance among diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. They also disrupt the supply chains and legitimate suppliers of medicines and medical devices by undermining trust and causing turmoil in the market.
Fragmented Data Health Systems
Globalization and digitalization have increased the cases of fragmented data in health systems. EMRs, medical insurance systems, wearables, and lab platforms all contain important medical information but are dispersed across countries and devices.
This not only slows the diagnosis and treatment process but also hinders analytics, AI implementation, and evidence-based decision-making. Add here records in different countries that are impossible to retrieve online, and the scale of fragmentation becomes truly large.
How Can Blockchain Fill the Gaps With Its Capabilities?
Blockchain in healthcare can fill the gaps in public health and become an answer to issues like data breaches, problems in supply chain management, and vulnerability of electronic health records. At its core are four main features embedded into all blockchain solutions. These features include decentralization, immutability, transparency, and provenance.
Decentralized Nature
The blockchain system is inherently decentralized. It works based on a distributed ledger technology (DLT), meaning that no single person or authority controls personal data. Medical data doesn’t need to be stored on one server, access to which can be easily limited. Instead, this technology distributes copies of the ledger across multiple nodes in the blockchain network.
An important part of decentralization is a trustless environment. Data security or integrity doesn’t rely on a single establishment. It is protected by blockchain’s security protocols, so medical institutions can safely exchange and verify health information.
Immutable Data
Immutability means that no data entered into a blockchain and healthcare system can be deleted or altered without consensus from the network. This mechanism guarantees the privacy and security of every health record. It is ensured by cryptographic hashing, where each block has a special hash associated with the previous block. This creates a secure and auditable chain of immutable records. In the crypto space, there are different mechanisms: Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-of-Stake (PoS), Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET), etc.
Transparent Environments
There are a lot of participants in the project development process. In healthcare systems, a lot of projects (like clinical trials or cross-border care) involve multi-party collaboration. Blockchain provides transparent environments for such processes, allowing one to see who initiated and performed a certain action. This works for the accountability of all participants and ensures that stakeholders can view relevant records, approvals, or transactions on the network.
Provenance
Provenance on the blockchain lets you trace the origin and history of an object, product, or information. It is especially valuable to the pharmaceutical supply chain as it ensures instant verification, counterfeit prevention, and faster recalls.
For example, it can help trace and verify the authenticity of any medical device or drug, check its manufacturers, and control all the details of the delivery process, including the conditions of transportation. For regulators within the healthcare industry, it provides a trusted and accessible source of healthcare data.
9 Indispensable Blockchain Healthcare Applications
Blockchain technology is already used in several key areas of healthcare applications. From secure management of electronic health records to automated enforcement of clinical protocols and guidelines, it ensures the safety and privacy of health data, as well as supports clinical research and protects the drug supply chain.
1. Patient-Centric Data Ownership and Consent Management
Blockchain can solve the issue of limited patient control over their digital health data. Instead of all the information being stored on one server without patient access, records can be securely shared between patients and healthcare providers. Patient consent can be given and revoked at any time as well (although it may be technically challenging).
A good example of such a unified platform is MediBloc. It is a blockchain solution that allows users to aggregate and own their medical data from multiple providers. While providing greater accessibility, MediBloc also ensures high standards of data exchange safety.
2. Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Traceability
Because the medical supply and pharmaceutical system is so complicated and has so many participants, being able to trace particular products or services back to their origin is crucial. Without this, counterfeit drugs and devices enter the market. Most importantly, they endanger patient safety. However, they can also cost drug manufacturers a fortune.
Blockchain can serve as a transparent ledger where each stage of the drug’s lifecycle, from manufacturing to packaging, shipping, and delivery, is recorded. An example of the use of this technology is MediLedger. It is an innovative platform that helps pharmaceutical companies comply with the U.S. legislation.
3. Verification and Management of Medical Staff Credentials
Verifying the credentials of doctors, nurses, and researchers is a long, manual process with paper documents and multiple parties involved. It not only slows down the hiring process but also leaves a lot of room for error and fraud.
Blockchain simplifies and secures this process by putting verified credentials on an unalterable ledger. This way, all licenses, permits, degrees, and work history are safely stored and can’t be tampered with. Employers can very quickly confirm their employees’ qualifications without the need to check with intermediaries. And employees can easily access their personal records or share them with one click.
An example of such an app can be ProCredEx. It is a digital marketplace where medical professionals can store and verify their data.
4. Automated Insurance Claims Processing
Insurance claims processing in healthcare often takes a lot of time due to manual reviews and paperwork. That causes frustration in both patients and providers. Errors may also be expensive and delay final settlements.
Blockchain can change this process using smart contracts. Such agreements self-execute if predetermined conditions are met. Smart contracts can speed up the process and lower the administrative load, as well as reduce the possibility of human error, like patient eligibility, treatment records, coverage terms, etc.
Guardtime is one among many examples of blockchain in healthcare. Located in Estonia, the company offers blockchain solutions and has partnered with Estonia’s national health system on a mission to secure and automate insurance claims using blockchain.
5. Secure Telehealth Consultations
Virtual healthcare has become more common. Telehealth is generally more secure and reliable now, but some custom solutions may have issues verifying identity or protecting data.
Blockchain technology in healthcare may help through secure identity management. It can offer encrypted data exchange with transparent access logs. Because they use such solutions, both patients and providers can interact via secured channels, instantly share protected information, and store important records.
Medicalchain and BurstIQ are examples of such blockchain-based solutions.
6. Organ Transplant Logistics
Organ transplant logistics is among the most important operations in healthcare. It’s supposed to be quick, seamless, and error-free. However, it’s usually prone to mistakes and delays since the logistics between the donors and recipients depend on a lot of factors. And any breakdown can cost lives.
Blockchain can help with the administrative part of the process. From verifying donors’ eligibility to tracking the organs’ location in real time, it can reduce the risks of mistakes and fraud and establish a secure connection between the parties in the process.
Currently, there are not a lot of blockchain solutions on the market that handle every stage of the process. However, there is BOMS, a Blockchain-enabled Organ Matching System, that deals directly with cross-matching of organ transplants and connects donors and recipients.
7. Decentralized Clinical Trials
Clinical trials are complex processes with multiple stakeholders. They take a long time and require close data integrity control and participant monitoring. Blockchain addresses these issues by offering a secure, decentralized mechanism for managing consent, storing data in an immutable manner, and offering transparency.
With blockchain, patient registration, data submission, and adherence to protocols can be encoded so that all stakeholders can verify them independently. ClinTex CTi, or Clinical Trials Intelligence, is one of them. It has a blockchain platform that can improve the clinical trials process and monitor trial performance.
8. Healthcare Asset Tokenization
Tokenization means representing real-world healthcare assets on the blockchain. These can be medical equipment, research data, or intellectual property. This offers new opportunities for funding, fractional ownership, and data sharing between organizations without disruption.
For example, hospitals can tokenize expensive machines so that multiple clinics can jointly own and make better use of machine time. Researchers and patients can also tokenize data to control access and monetization through smart contracts. Equideum Health is working on tokenized health data exchanges where patients own anonymized data and are rewarded for sharing it for research.
9. Automated Enforcement of Clinical Protocols and Guidelines
Stricter adherence to clinical protocols and guidelines is the norm in the healthcare sector. However, the verification process is often compromised by negligence, misinformation, or inconsistencies. Blockchain technology-based smart contracts can rectify the situation by automatically ensuring that guidelines for treatment are followed, for instance, administering the right drug at the right time and in the right amount.
This is particularly helpful in environments such as retail pharmacies or hospitals, where automation helps minimize human error. Some clinical support platforms are experimenting with blockchain in healthcare to embed rule checks into care, for instance, verifying drug interactions and treatment schedules before medications are prescribed. However, there are not a lot of such solutions present on the market yet.
Where Does Blockchain Fall Short in Healthcare?
Despite all of its potential, blockchain technology in the healthcare market has its limitations. Some of them are associated with local or international data access and data storage requirements, while others are related to growing expenses and legal challenges. Although some challenges can be resolved with time, others seem too complex to tackle with the current stage of technology.
Blockchain Solutions May Conflict With GDPR Requirements
One of the core features of blockchain is immutability, which ensures that no sensitive data saved on the network can be deleted, altered, or manipulated. It’s good in theory since it allows for transparency and accountability. However, one of the main rules of GDPR (the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation) is the “right to be forgotten.”
Thus, these principles contradict and create a conflict that virtually cannot be resolved. Some methods, like hashing or off-chain storage, can mitigate the risks, but cannot remove them completely and are likely to add to the complexity and ambiguity of the situation.
Challenges Integrating With Legacy Systems
Most insurance companies and hospitals still heavily rely on fragmented data infrastructures. These weren’t designed for the decentralized interoperability required for the work of blockchain applications. That’s why integrating such solutions requires significant reengineering and can mess with these data management systems.
A lot of service providers and healthcare professionals resist replacing existing electronic medical record systems and software products with blockchain, as it might entail high costs and raise compliance concerns.
Growing Storage Expenses
In healthcare, even the smallest file, like diagnostic results or a single medical record, is pretty data-heavy. And blockchain applications are designed to store such heavy files. Since every node must hold a full copy of the data, as data increases, costs grow as well.
To avoid this, systems can store files off-chain and save only a secure reference on the blockchain, but this adds complexity and slightly reduces the security of medical records.
Outdated Data or Typos/Mistakes Cannot Be Corrected
Any data that gets into blockchain isn’t subject to alteration or manipulation. This means that every piece of information in the documents about medical history or a clinical trial, including mistakes and typos, will be stored there forever and cannot be changed.
Records can only be amended using additional transactions or flags, which can lead to confusion, duplicated medical histories, and potential patient safety issues. This is especially problematic in clinical and research environments where data accuracy is critical.
Cannot Handle Large Data Volumes
Blockchain can only process a limited number of transactions per second and isn’t optimized for processing large amounts of data. For example, the Ethereum network processes roughly 15-30 TPS (transactions per second), which is insufficient for the demands of national healthcare systems that process thousands of patient interactions per second. Though Layer 2 solutions may help, they introduce additional complexity, are not always appropriate for sensitive medical information, and can damage data privacy.
Leverage the Power of Blockchain in Your Facility!
The healthcare industry has issues like data security risks, complex supply chains, and inefficient legacy systems. Blockchain technology offers a solution by providing greater transparency, enhanced protection of data, and improved sharing of information.
At Weelorum, we specialize in developing blockchain solutions that cater to healthcare needs. From protecting patient information to simplifying insurance claims to improving the trackability of medical supplies, we design systems that are secure, stable, and scalable. Our expertise ensures your organization can leverage blockchain to address current challenges and prepare for future growth.
