Topic: Bitcoin in healthcare (Read 394 times)

In as much as most countries are against the use of Bitcoin, I think it would be very beneficial to the healthcare system of countries that's adopted it's use, bitcoin is known for it's security and could ensure that there are no breaches in patients data. It would help Medical institutions ensure that those data's are safe and there would be no illegal access by unauthorised personalities.

 The blockchain could also help manufacturers keep good tracks of of substances used in producing drugs  and prevent drug traffickers from getting access to those substances they'll use in producing fake drugs that could be hazardous to the human health. Over the years many individuals have been victims of fake and counterfeit drugs and I think with the help of blockchain, it could keep track of the substances used for the produce of those fake drugs by drug traffickers.

 Also, medical institutions could benefit from the blockchain technology by using it to also keep track of not only those substances for producing drugs bit for the credentials of their staff, working for them. It could also help in the verification process of employees working for a medical institution. The blockchain could also ensure that the software of an institution is highly secured and safe from being easily accessed or penetrated by hackers.

 Well since several institutions are now accepting Bitcoin as a mode of payment, I think it could also provide a safe and faster means of carrying out transactions in a medical institution, thereby helping to increase the speed of transaction. It could also help in making sure that there's not much cost in transactions, thereby taking of the third party system that the banks and other financial institutions operates on.

Blockchain technology itself is actually very useful at any facet of human life. If people or developers are employing it appropriately and not because of the main purpose of most devs of screwing their investors, blockchain will surely make their life more sophisticated and easier.

Just think of the benefits of being fast and transparent, and how it can improve in the operations. For sure, logistics will be more efficient using blockchain technology. It is how the companies can take advantage of these benefits.

Imagine Bitcoin making waves in healthcare supply chains. Through blockchain, each phase from manufacturing to delivery, gets securely logged. No more uncertainties like you can easily trace the origins of every product. This not only thwarts counterfeit items but also allows stakeholders to stay on top of supplies in real-time. It's like giving healthcare supply chains a robust upgrade, enhancing reliability and transparency

Does bitcoin really have an effect to healthcare?That'll be brainstorming of technology..Well,so long as technology and the world continues to advance,there could be room for many other innovations.

The cryptocurrency is still not accepted by all and I think blockchain/bitcoin network should used for the purpose it was created.Although there are new signs emerging everyday and the problems of misinformation;a lack of a precise and concise information should be avoided.

The question is how will bitcoin impact the global healthcare,will it deliver?Bitcoin is a digital currency,and one of it's importance is to facilitate the  ongoing financial problems.
There could be another option to promote global healthcare or there should be a consensus over this implementation.

IMO, many features from blockchain can be applied to different areas of life, including healthcare. But with bitcoin, I think it is independent and only provides indirect financial support when using its benefits to serve medical issues. Research and development costs are always expensive, and money is always needed to solve them, but I don't think it's worth trying to link bitcoin's role in many social problems. As the past story I know about some people used crypto to send to charities, and see here as long as they accept to use it, donating with crypto is also a method small. The application of blockchain technology to healthcare is still too new, such as coding each drug to be able to access and verify them.

The application of blockchain technology is not restricted to any industry. Bitcoin can be utilised in every sector of the economy; how we choose to apply or utilise it is up to us. You know, that's just how other businesses and sectors use cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to simplify their own lives, therefore I believe that's how it should be.

Yes, but I would like to remind you that the government bears the primary responsibility for funding the health care system, and I do not believe that bitcoin will play a role in these processes. While it would be beneficial if it did, the government will not use the process to finance the health care system when they have their own local currency and banks.

This can be another option for healthcare system. As long as the place or country who will established this will embrace bitcoin for other option for healthcare payment or whatsoever means to use bitcoin.

Well it’s gonna be anonymous anyway we wouldn’t have the complete information of the patient if I am understanding it correctly I think this could be helpful for medical students but I also think a lot of unusual people would use it for weird things. Maybe someone with access to patient records detailing diseases could fake their own diagnosis. I don’t know what op means exactly but this does not seem too realistic if the blockchain were to be applied on to medical records.

I think bitcoin would still be beneficial in terms of finance. I am sure most patients’ and their families have troubles with insurance and healthcare and bitcoin could definitely help with that.

We're trying to give too many utility to Bitcoin which isn't a bad thing but we should learn to see Bitcoin for what it is and not try to force something else on it. Bitcoin is a currency and as a currency it primary function is to serve as a means of exchange, other benefits are secondary and shouldn't be a focus. Bitcoin technology can be used for various purposes but its primary function is to facilitate the affairs of Bitcoin as a currency.


This has nothing to do with Bitcoin, other currency can be used for funding at a more faster rate than that of bitcoin although the security of the Blockchain aren't the same as those other altcoins or stablecoins as the case may be aren't as secured as the Blockchain of Bitcoin is but ICO aren't words relating with Bitcoin but altcoins. How I see Bitcoin improving medical research funds is through investment appreciation of the funds meant for th research.

When research funds are invested in Bitcoin and they double then the research teams gets double funding to carry out their researches. Borderless transaction to supports the research is also another benefits but this can be done with various currency and not just Bitcoin so it's not much of a point.

It's not about Bitcoin itself, but the underlying technology.  Bitcoin was the spark that ignited the blockchain revolution, but its principles can be adapted to create secure and decentralized systems in countless fields. Blockchain's immutability is a game-changer for patient records.  Unalterable medical histories eliminate the risk of data breaches or tampering.  This fosters trust between patients and healthcare providers, as doctors can be confident they're basing treatment decisions on accurate information.  Additionally, patients can easily share their medical records securely with different providers, streamlining care coordination.

The applications of blockchain extend far beyond healthcare.  Imagine secure and transparent voting systems, eliminating concerns about electoral fraud.  Supply chains could be revolutionized, with every step of a product's journey being tracked, ensuring authenticity and ethical sourcing.  Even the music industry could benefit, with artists receiving fair compensation for their work through transparent royalty tracking.

BTC is a great payment option in any business or institution, but imagine if people want to pay for cheap medicines in the hospital or settle their hospital bills and the tx fee rate is high at the time, they would surely prefer to just pay with cash. I agree fully that BTC is p2p cash, but i also agree that right now paying with BTC is expensive and it is only much better for people who are making expensive or cross-border payments.

We need new ideas, but medical study funding is slowed down by red tape. It was easy for Bitcoin and the ICO strategy to get around these problems. It works quickly and completely new, helping to speed up groundbreaking study right away. If a company or study project is close to making a big discovery but is short on money, this could save them.

Who could refuse Bitcoin's perfect payment methods? Bitcoin could make complicated, time-sensitive medical deals easier, so doctors can focus on taking care of their patients. This is great for both patients and healthcare workers.

There are a lot of possible perks. Imagine healthcare systems that work well, are safe, and have enough money. That's what Bitcoin offers. The future doesn't wait, so we shouldn't either.

In this aspect under confidentiality it could have made a sense to me if you were implying on having hospital patients data stored in a decentralized sort of wallet just as bitcoins are stored as to be accessible only to the holder in the case the patiently alone and whoever the patient gives access to his seed phrase but under a blockchain tech it's impossible for the confidentiality to be achieved. Don't forget that blockchain is decentralized and can be accessed by anyone and that's against medical ethics in exposing patients data to public.

This is the only part that i am more interested in. Using Bitcoin as a means to fund research projects is a great idea. Indirectly, it is working as a means for fast payment in terms of funding payment options. Not only that, but with the security of the blockchain, funding can be kept well to avoid theft. I have heard news of co-workers stealing from the funding projects.

Your data in healthcare is not as protected as you think and data confidentiality is not the priority of health organizations. In fact, your data is sold to many pharma companies for various reasons. Doctors often push prescription medicines of certain brands to their customers because they are paid by those pharma companies to sell as many drugs as possible.

ICO is not offered by the Bitcoin technology. ICO is just a way of raising funds for a new cryptocurrency. To be honest, any healthcare company can raise funds without cryptocurrencies but pharma is a very brutal business.

It's quite the opposite. Bitcoin payments are getting more expensive as the number of transactions increase. Just a few weeks ago, price on a simple transaction with 1 input and 1 output was up to 20 dollars and higher also.

There’s a project like this in the past that proposed the use of Blockchain for their patient records. The idea is to easily transfer patients record to any hospital that has access to that particular blockchain records. This is good since you can be admit to any hospital in the world without the need to request your files to your previous hospital especially if you live far away now.

But of course this project doesn’t materialize since hospital will not cooperate on this extra labor just to share records to competitors. Also it’s very to implement due to privacy issue since blockchain records is meant for transparency and not for private matter such as patients information.

Medical records are the most useful part which requires daily records within 24 hours. In the field of medical records, recording never stops for a day.
Then, in my opinion, the procurement of medical equipment is the most beneficial because the data collection can be seen at all rather than using an e-catalog.

We already know that the payment sector is very good, but in this area it is more about economics.

You can probably use blockchain technology to create a medicine cabinet system that can't be tampered with, you know how there are shady hospitals there that are doing over the counter or smuggling of some opiates to some drug addicts or to sell on the streets, when there's no way to tamper with the drugs that are getting in and getting out of the system, it's actually much easier to track down what's happening and there's less people that are doing drugs because the supply is running dry, another potential use would be records for patients since there's no way to tamper then the records would be faked since each patient record is supposed to be unique or something, there's a lot of things that you can do with bitcoin in healthcare, many industries can benefit or use the technology too although it wouldn't be bitcoin itself most of the time, more like the technology that bitcoin uses or is from that they can get inspiration from.

With the harsh economic conditions, the healthcare sector could seek alternative means of financing medical research and development. It may be a viable idea to invest their profits in Bitcoin which could yield some earnings after some years.

For now, I don't see any need to record the medical history of a patient in a decentralized platform where everyone could have access to it. However, names can be replaced with codes to hide the identity of the patient but that's not still necessary since such data can still be leaked to the public. I don't think this is necessary because hospitals are doing a very good job of keeping the medical data of patients private.

I guess there are other technologies for this. We don't have to do everything on Bitcoin. Bitcoin's blockchain isn't the only blockchain in town. There are thousand others.

In terms of payment, yes, Bitcoin can take this role as it is a payment system with a native currency. But in terms of data storage and crowdfunding, I'm afraid Bitcoin wasn't made for this. Data storage doesn't actually need a decentralized blockchain. As to crowdfunding, this is where Ethereum, for example, is better at.

Bitcoin has been researched and confirmed to have the possibilities Healthcare system. The Blockchain gives a direct access to the preservation of database of patients . It can also help fix certain errors during clinical trials. Further it helps to optimize business processes, lower costs, improve patient quality, improve compliance, and make better use of data relevant to healthcare according to this research paper

I am only thinking about Bitcoin as a payment method if you're talking about it in the healthcare or medical sector. But if you're dealing with blockchain, there are various chains and blockchains that can be used for these recordings and database of patients and health staff.
Forget about the ICOs, they're terrible and they're gone on these days because many have used it to gather funds and turned out that they were a scam.

Blockchain shouldn't be used as a data storage. It's a public ledger, and even if it was confidential somehow, it would get way too big. Also because of the immutable nature of it, we couldn't even change the data.
Layer 1 should be kept as small and lean as possible.

Initial Coin Offerings are just a name for fund raising method. In 2017 several different altcoins tried to raise money for similar kind of scam projects you are talking about. All of them are pretty much died. And like someone already pointed out; This has nothing to do with bitcoin.

This isn't about health care, but just an idea that more places should accept bitcoin as payment. That has been the goal since the start of bitcoin.

You’ve got it all mixed up mate. I think the points that might apply as you introduced the thread is you having to speak about it been some means to fundings and payment for services.

When you talk about privacy and data, it’s got little to do with Bitcoin in the context you’re referring. It’s got more to do with the blockchain technology and the blockchain technology isn’t something that is peculiar to Bitcoin. It might have started with the cryptocurrency idea but, it’s been adopted across various fields today for data storage.

Meanwhile, there isn’t any privacy about that. It’s open to all and patient data isn’t maintained that way with regards to privacy.

Exactly and not only the healthcare sector but all other ministries can also apply it . In 2022 General Election in Nigeria, there was a man after the election problem was analysing the election in the national television Stations and said the election results can be stored and transmit from the Blockchain network. And it was that day I came to notice that the Blockchain has a multifunction dimension which can be used to store data and information for future use.

As for me the best sector to use Blockchain is the electoral college body because the nation corruption starts from there and once that body is well secure then all the other departments will adjust and the right thing because if they didn't do the right thing then the next election you will be vote out from the system.

Perhaps it would have been better but based on my perception about health issues every of the benefit you have mentioned is quite the opposite of it. that is specifically for me I don't know how others will see it.

Because for data security, just as it has been said above it's quite impossible to keep patient datas private because in the Blockchain network I will be open for every one to access and as such it can be a sucided decision store health information in public. e.g if I'm a HIV patient with the stereotype in my place and one eventually come across my data, it will just be over for me because everyone will probably run from me.

I never heard of any Initial crowdfunding offered by Bitcoin technology for medical research purposes, more or less I have read several other cryptocurrencies being created to help in medical research through protein folding.    To name a few cryptocurrencies I believe FLDC  or Folding coins is created for such purpose, same with Curecoins where participants can help in medical research through folding@home by giving the hashrate power of their devices.

When it comes to ICO I think it is not the Bitcoin technology but rather people who want to milk money from the investors, it has nothing to do with the Bitcoin technology, IMO.



Bank payment is instant now with the help of several improvements in the banking system.  It is even faster than Bitcoin transaction confirmation since local bank transfer is just a matter of seconds.  Bitcoin only shines when it comes to international transfer but I doubt a person will have his health taken care in a foreign country unless he is wealthy enough to cover the expenses of healthcare abroad.

In addition to @OP's information and probably the source of @OP's topic,  here is an open letter from Shashank Bishnoi also calls himself Chief Crypto Nomad from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/impact-crypto-healthcare-industry-shashank-bishnoi#:~:text=Cryptocurrencies

It was discussed in this open letter about the impact of not only Bitcoin but cryptocurrency in the medical field.

All other benefits may be enjoyed, apart from the data & security.

I think this is very easy to think of and say, but establishing it may seem impossible. Despite the fact that Bitcoin is decentralized, you can still track everybody's transactions from one wallet to another. What you cannot tell is the identity of the person who signed those transactions. 

So, now, let's bring block chain technology to the medical system. You cannot keep a medical record of someone without adding a name to that medical record. You definitely must add the name of the patient to enable you to identify which is which and for which patients. Some patients can have similar illnesses and diseases, and the only way to identify their records is through their name. So, there is no confidentiality when using the Bitcoin network in the medical system. 

The way to use Bitcoin in the medical system is if hospitals and clinics agree to accept Bitcoin payments as another payment method. 

The best system in which I think we need to introduce the use of blockchain technology is the government sector, during elections and also during donations. If Bitcoin is used by the government during an election, the result will be public, as every individual can count the votes from their home. If the government also employs Bitcoin for donations, the public will be sure that the government is not lying about the amount they have said to donate.

If bitcoin is to be emulated in the health sector, this implementation method should be the most straightforward. It could also be related to the advocacy for bitcoin to be used as a general payment method for all services, i.e. when bitcoin becomes legal tender around the world. Bitcoin does not need to be integrated specifically into the health sector as a means of payment when it becomes widely accepted; it will suffice there and function perfectly, just as it will in other sectors. All other benefits of incorporating bitcoin into the health sector can be hectic, but they will serve their purpose once accomplished.

Maybe Incase you're missing these out, Bitcoin is being applicable on every sectors of the economy, because people make use of bitcoin regardless of the place or professional settings they are as well as the way many industries have key into the use of the blockchain technology in performing many better security practice on their services, products and data, this will have to depend on the aspect we want to make it applicable and our target towards achieving this base on our desirability of bitcoin on a decentralized network of blockchain technology.

I thought that the benefits of Bitcoin blockchain could be applied in the procurement of medical equipment in every agency, but all of that would be useless if a country was still anti the Bitcoin system. I still work in the health sector to this day even though my job is in the preparation of program planning which covers all financial flows.
Because it is transparent, its benefits can also be used to create a system free from corruption.

Applying blockchain technology to the healthcare sector is something that I have read about, I think but it's not that mainstream. I'm not really sure. I think it could improve some of the old technology that the healthcare industry has and I believe that it can be of help.

In terms of BTC, maybe acceptance of payment? IDK how BTC could help as it is or something.

The BTC blockchain is public and transparent, and whichever data in it is open to everyone, patients hospital data should be private and should not be open for everyone to see, so nobody is going to use the BTC blockchain to store patients data in a hospital. I have not heard of patients data being at risk when stored in the hospitals record book, it is even when it is on the blockchain that it can be accessed by 'unauthorized personnel'.
ICO's do not have anything to do with BTC or the BTC network.

Often times we attribute the benefit of Bitcoin only to financial and economic sector of various businesses and nations. Have we ever thought about the benefit that the  Bitcoin network will have if implemented on health care? Especially now that it is rising faster than we expected
Here are some of the benefit I can think of:

Data Security
Confidentiality of data is very essential for a health organization. Patient's data are not to be accessed by unauthorized personnel. The Bitcoin and Blockchain technology provides a decentralized and secure means of data storage. Leveraging on this technology will help to secure healthcare data.

Improving Medical research Funding
Funding is a very important part of any research and researches requires a lot of resources and effort. Normal funding processes can be time consuming, however, the Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) that is offered by the Bitcoin technology provides a more seamless approach to funding researchers and healthcare start ups by raising funds directly from individuals and organizations that are interested in the research by issuing  tokens.

Effective Payment process.
One of the advantages of Bitcoin technology is the ability to make seamless payment. Normal payment processes with traditional banks can be time consuming and delayed especially when it involves a large sum but with the help of Bitcoin technology, seamless payment transactions can be carried out.

 This certainly isn't all the benefit we stand to gain when Bitcoin is being used in healthcare. What other benefit can you think of.