Will Blockchain in Healthcare Inform Fintech?
Blockchain is now a focus of the financial industry, but the technology could become widely used in the healthcare industry too, according to an article in Becker’s Health IT and CIO Review. Bruce Broussard, CEO and President of Humana, believes blockchain will become the next big healthcare technology innovation, particularly with respect to payments and payer contracts. Because the parties to those kinds of contracts (healthcare provider on one side and healthcare payer (such as a health insurer) on the other) may now have a safe and reliable way to share information without going through cumbersome central databases, information, as well as contractual processes, would be automatically verified and authorized. The end benefits may include lower administration costs, faster claims processing and less fraud. These are similar to the benefits that may arise from the use of blockchain in the financial industry.
Another healthcare application of blockchain may realize the holy grail of sharing health information across many healthcare systems by eliminating the middleman holding the central database and providing formerly disconnected parties with a safe information network. As with the financial industry, eliminating the middleman will have tremendous ripple effects throughout the healthcare industry. If the healthcare industry successfully implements blockchain, it stands to reason that innovations in healthcare technology will loop back to further push innovations in fintech.