Blockchain use cases are challenging to implement in the life sciences industry. The rapidly developing landscape of blockchain additionally presents a complexity for organizations looking forward to adopting blockchain in this industry.
When it comes to the life sciences industry, blockchain comes with great potential to enhance numerous activities. However, it still possesses several challenges when it comes to mass adoption. While blockchain technology matures, professionals believe that mainstream adoption is likely to be rapid. It is forecasted that the blockchain’s value will grow to 176 billion dollars by 2025, including non-financial use cases within the life sciences industry.
Blockchain’s Impacts in Life Science Fields
Supply chain management, patient-centric usage, and clinical trial management are the three areas with the utmost potential for blockchain’s impact and adoption in the industry of Life science.
- Supply chain and drug development management
In the areas of supply chain management and drug manufacturing, blockchain technology can be pretty beneficial for ensuring integrity. Tracking and provenance of compounds are two essential areas that remain under the purview of specialists like the FDA. Current procedures that allow supply chain tracking and drug provenance are fragmented because of data silos and might lead to human mistakes as well as theft. In this case, blockchain technology can provide immutable batch records of APIs within the easy reporting systems and manufacturing process for drug batch recall and adverse events.
- Clinical trials management
Blockchain technology can impact the complicated processes integrated into the implementation, management, and design of clinical trials. Clinical trials possess various stakeholders including study/patient subjects, drug/medical service providers, study sponsors, healthcare professionals like nurses and doctors, clinical investigators, and numerous government regulatory authorities.
Sensitive information, including clinical trial outcomes and patient health records, need to remain secure and private. The clinical trial protocol needs to be transparent and immutable. But, the whole process needs to be conducted transparently. When it comes to stakeholders, protocols strictly should be followed. Moreover, safe and secure communication between stakeholders from various professions and numerous clinical trial websites can be inappropriate and can readily compromise safe health data.
Blockchain Technology facilitates traceability, imageability, and scalability of records with varied information access in permissible levels. Blockchain can help facilitate trial protocols, manage patient consent, track patient samples, and ensure safe communications between trial websites.
Also Read: Blockchain’s Utility in Streamlining the COVID-19 Vaccine Supply Chain
- Patient-centric usage
The potential impact of the technology of blockchain on the activities that encompass a patient can be signified as patient-centric blockchain usage. These are such varied use cases that include implementation of smart contracts for ownership management of health information, patient consent, patient billing and claims, patient record management, prescription medicine management, data security for medical Technology, along with deployment in personalized medicine.
The implementation of blockchain has achieved the maximum traction in patient-centric usage as witnessed by early collaborators that happen to be underway. Blockchain implementation helps collaborate health services and authorities for tracking and maintaining patient consent for utilization of their health information. On the other hand, the blockchain application facilitates secure communication, safe analysis, and tracking by Health care professionals when it comes to patient’s drug prescriptions.
Wrapping Up
Implementation of blockchain in the industry of life sciences is gaining traction and the professionals identifying the critical challenges to adoption of blockchain as non-regulatory and non-technical. Rather, blockchain technology is changing the mindset of the political public and personal leadership for the adoption of blockchain technology globally. Professionals are providing the public with a positive outlook for blockchain implementation in the space of health care shortly. As blockchain technology measures and the first use cases emerge to help mitigate risks, more and more mainstream blockchain adoption is to be expected in the next ten years. This will enable the technology to bear its fruits within the ecosystem of life sciences.
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