Reports say that 95% of identity theft is from stolen healthcare records. In fact, healthcare identity theft is 25 times higher than with credit cards.
Web3 healthcare offers healthcare data security, management, and ownership and benefits patients with counterfeit pharmaceutical control, Metaverse surgical collaboration, medical education, and healthcare record monetization.
Be an empowered patient. Read on and explore Web3 healthcare and its benefits to patients.
What Is Web3?
“Web3 is the internet owned by the builders and users, orchestrated with tokens,” says Packy McCormick, a Web3 adviser. Simply put, it is a web that is based on blockchain (including cryptocurrencies, nonfungible tokens/NFTs, decentralized finance, etc.) where users can read, write, or own a version of the web and have more control over their web communities.
Consider Web3 as a code of conduct, a principle where you take part in governing Internet usage.
Web3 in Healthcare
Imagine having the power to access and control your healthcare records. You don’t need to ask permission from healthcare administrators. You can share them with appropriate persons and be worry-free about data security against cyberhackers.
Web3 paves the way to accessible, efficient, and patient-centered healthcare. It aids in continuously developing more healthcare services and solutions.
Benefits of Web3 Healthcare to Patients
1. Healthcare Data Management and Ownership
Most patients have no access to or ownership of their medical records. In fact, health insurance, clinics, and hospitals benefit from them. They may even sell healthcare data.
Healthcare institutions are unorganized and inefficient in medical data management. Many patient records cause data mismanagement among hospital administrations.
Patients feel denied their right to access their medical records because these institutions store medical data in centralized servers. Requesting medical records takes a lot of effort and time because many patients transact in the healthcare institution daily.
Web3 eradicates this dilemma. In Web3, a healthcare professional uses smart contracts to store the patient’s records on the blockchain. Web3 stores, organizes, and structures patient data in a fixed ledger. Because of its transparency, people can view and access any information or changes in this ledger.
Web3 healthcare like JennyCo gives patients ownership and control over their medical data. Patients also own the right to allow access to anyone. However, those with access to the data, including healthcare professionals, should input a generated public key. This ownership ensures patients receive proper health care because each is unique and has different illnesses, symptoms, and treatments.
2. Security of Data
Patient healthcare data in centralized servers is highly susceptible to falling into the hands of hackers who use it for malevolent intentions. This situation entails giving a hundred percent trust to servers. It’s irrational to heedlessly hope that the services will use the data appropriately and that service providers don’t change their privacy rules.
Web3 ensures your healthcare data is free from security issues, access, misuse, or sale without your permission.
The blockchain is a secure ledger. It cannot be manipulated. Sensitive information stored in it cannot be tampered with because it is decentralized. Data is distributed among multiple nodes, making it difficult for hackers to alter or delete. You’ll be carefree against data breaches.
3. Control of Pharmaceutical Counterfeits
Counterfeit drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic kits have increased directly proportional to the demands for these health products. Counterfeit perpetrators only care for their profits, not the health and welfare of people. They reduce the quantities of required ingredients of the genuine drug, worsening patients’ disease.
Illicit manufacturers target populations with weak technical capacity and low risk for detection to increase profit.
Counterfeits and substandard healthcare products proliferate in areas with limited access to quality and safe healthcare products, medical facilities and institutions with low management standards and poor ethical practices, and corrupt public and private sectors.
Web3 benefits the healthcare industry by decreasing these counterfeits through blockchain security and traceability. Transaction details written in the blocks are time-stamped and cannot be altered or deleted. It resolves pharmaceutical counterfeiting issues as long as the drug is registered on the blockchain before circulation.
Medicine authenticity can be verified through their presence on the blockchain. A medicine without any record can be considered counterfeit and removed from the supply chain before reaching the consumers.
Web3 also helps to track drug distribution, inefficiencies, and supply stock changes. Intensified security in counterfeit pharmaceutical tracking is more achievable when the medicine has an ID token that carries information about it. These pieces of information authenticate the medicinal drug.
4. Metaverse Collaboration for Surgical Operations
Another dilemma patients face is the unavailable surgeries on diseases in their country. Web3 solves this through collaboration among doctors from different places in planning, making clinical decisions, and performing surgery, incorporating augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain, among others.
How is this done? Collaboration, simulation, and training using the technologies (3D view of the patient’s body to detect tumors, for example) happen in the Metaverse. During the operation, surgeons supervise and assist in the Metaverse surgery using Web3 resources.
But would you believe that a review of telesurgery in humans found that there is variability in robotic and communication methods? It recommended signal latency reporting.
5. Medical Training and Education
Medical training was limited to 2D images, videos, or cadavers (which has ethical issues). Medical students, therefore, have a limited way of learning.
With Web3 technology, students are engrossed with real-world experiences and surgical training in the Metaverse using technological resources without risks before their real-life surgery.
6. Healthcare Record Monetization
Some institutions sell healthcare data. They, not the owner, profit from it. But how can a patient monetize their healthcare record?
Patients can monetize their healthcare records when they convert or mint them to NFTs and store them in the blockchain. They can sell their records to medical professionals and other entities for research or development of new healthcare products.
Next-Level Health Services
Upgrade the healthcare services you receive and be in control.
This new Internet revolution will provide a variety of benefits not only for healthcare, yet for the entire industry.
Consider Web3 healthcare and its benefits to patients and achieve your optimum health services.