Introduction
Blockchain technology has emerged as one of the most promising innovations for addressing persistent challenges in healthcare delivery and data management. While initially known for its role in cryptocurrency, blockchain's fundamental characteristics—decentralization, immutability, transparency, and cryptographic security—make it particularly well-suited to tackle some of healthcare's most complex problems.
The healthcare industry faces numerous systemic challenges that have proven resistant to traditional technological solutions: fragmented patient records across multiple providers, counterfeit medications causing thousands of deaths annually, complex supply chains vulnerable to fraud, and increasing cybersecurity threats to connected medical devices. These issues not only compromise patient safety but also create inefficiencies that drive up costs and reduce the quality of care.
Blockchain offers a unique approach to these challenges by creating tamper-proof, transparent systems that can securely connect disparate healthcare stakeholders while maintaining patient privacy and data integrity. As healthcare organizations increasingly recognize the potential of distributed ledger technology, we're beginning to see practical implementations that demonstrate real-world value beyond the experimental phase.
The following five use cases represent the most mature and promising applications of blockchain in healthcare today, each addressing specific pain points while laying the foundation for more advanced digital health innovations.
1. Supply Chain Transparency
A major challenge across the healthcare sector, as in many others, is ensuring the provenance of medical goods to confirm their authenticity. Using a blockchain-based system to track items from the manufacturing point and at each stage through the supply chain enables customers to have full visibility and transparency of the goods they are purchasing.
This represents a top priority for the industry, especially in developing markets where counterfeit prescription medicines cause tens of thousands of deaths annually. It is increasingly important for medical devices as well, which are proliferating rapidly with the adoption of remote health monitoring technologies, thereby also attracting the interest of malicious actors.
MediLedger serves as a leading example of a blockchain protocol that enables companies across the prescription drug supply chain to verify the authenticity of medicines, as well as expiration dates and other critical information.
Key benefits of blockchain (combined with AI):
- Customer confidence: Ability for customers to track each package's end-to-end provenance, with integration across manufacturers, wholesalers, shipping companies, and retailers
- Compliance: Medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies face substantial reporting burdens to ensure patient safety, so aggregating supply chain data into one unified system helps streamline compliance processes—for example, FarmaTrust's blockchain-based system provides automated law enforcement notifications when issues are detected
- Supply chain optimization: Once all data is centralized, companies can apply AI to better predict demand and optimize supply accordingly
Outside of financial markets, supply chain management and transparency represents one of the most advanced use cases for blockchain, exemplified by the high-profile partnership between IBM and Walmart to ensure food safety throughout the supply chain. As the technology and ROI have already been proven, we expect this to be the most significant short-term impact of blockchain on the healthcare industry.
2. Patient-Centric Electronic Health Records
Healthcare systems in every country and region struggle with the problem of data silos, meaning that patients and their healthcare providers have an incomplete view of medical histories. In 2016, Johns Hopkins University published research showing that the third leading cause of death in the United States was medical errors resulting from poorly coordinated care, such as planned actions not completed as intended or errors of omission in patient records.
One potential solution to this problem involves creating a blockchain-based system for medical records that can be linked into existing electronic medical record software and act as an overarching, comprehensive view of a patient's record. It is crucial to emphasize that actual patient data does not reside on the blockchain; rather, each new record appended to the blockchain—whether a physician's note, a prescription, or a lab result—is translated into a unique hash function, which is a small string of letters and numbers. Every hash function is unique and can only be decoded if the person who owns the data—in this case, the patient—gives their consent.
In this scenario, every time there is an amendment to a patient record, and every time the patient consents to share part of their medical record, it is logged on the blockchain as a transaction. Medicalchain serves as a leading example of a company working with healthcare providers to implement blockchain-enabled EMRs.
Key benefits of blockchain-enabled EMRs:
- A comprehensive single source of truth for a patient's medical records, creating a better experience for both patients and healthcare providers
- Enabling patients to see every time their medical records are updated and to give explicit consent every time they are shared with healthcare providers or others. Patients can also choose to share their medical records (or portions of their medical records) with researchers and set time limits on how long any third party can access their medical information
- Medical insurers can receive immediate, validated confirmation of healthcare services directly from patients, without the time and cost of intermediaries
Beyond creating blockchain-based medical records, Medicalchain is also developing a platform upon which others can build digital health solutions, including a virtual consultation service and a medical data exchange, where patients can choose to sell their anonymized medical data in exchange for Medtokens, to support digital health application development, such as population-level analytics solutions.
The emergence of much more complete, digitized, and shareable patient health records will have a profound impact on the healthcare market by fueling more advanced analytics. For example, personalized medicine is a promising field, but its development is severely hindered by lack of sufficient high-quality data. Access to more reliable and widespread population-level data would enable much more powerful segmentation and analysis of targeted medicine outcomes.
Alongside its supply chain solution, FarmaTrust has developed a solution to support gene and cell therapy treatments, while many research programs are also exploring how to combine AI and blockchain to advance personalized medicine.
3. Smart Contracts for Insurance and Supply Chain Settlements
Companies such as Chronicled and Curisium provide blockchain-based systems where various players in the healthcare sector—such as pharmaceutical companies, medical device OEMs, wholesalers, insurers, and healthcare providers—can authenticate their identities as organizations, log contract details, track transactions of goods and services, and manage payment settlement details for those goods and services. This type of environment goes a step beyond supply chain management to also enable trading partners and insurance providers in the healthcare sector to operate based on fully digital and, in some cases, automated contract terms.
By having shared digital contracts between manufacturers, distributors, and healthcare organizations logged on a blockchain ledger, rather than each player having their own version of contracts, they can significantly reduce disputes over payment chargeback claims for prescription medicines and other goods. According to Chronicled, because pricing structures often change, there are over one million chargeback claims made between these players every year, more than 5% of which are disputed, requiring lengthy manual resolution processes.
Similarly, shared smart contracts can be used to manage medical insurance contracts for patients, where Curisium states that 10% of claims are disputed. As in other use cases, once this data is digitized and easily accessible, insurance providers can use more advanced analytics to optimize health outcomes and costs.
4. Medical Staff Credential Verification
Similar to tracking the provenance of medical goods, blockchain technology can be used to track the experience and qualifications of medical professionals, where trusted medical institutions and healthcare organizations can log the credentials of their staff, in turn helping to streamline the hiring process for healthcare organizations. US-based ProCredEx has developed such a medical credential verification system using the R3 Corda blockchain protocol.
Key benefits of this blockchain system:
- Faster credentialing for healthcare organizations during the hiring process
- An opportunity for medical institutions, insurers, and healthcare providers to monetize their existing credentials data on past and current staff
- Transparency and reassurance for partners, such as organizations subcontracting locum tenens, or in emerging virtual health delivery models to inform patients about medical staff experience
5. IoT Security for Remote Monitoring
One of the biggest trends in digital health is the adoption of remote monitoring solutions, where various sensors measuring patients' vital signs are being used to help give healthcare practitioners more visibility into patients' health, enabling more proactive and preventative care. Remote monitoring represents a promising area with numerous applications across different healthcare scenarios.
However, security is a significant issue in health IoT, both in terms of ensuring that patient data is private and secure and that it is not tampered with to create false information. In some cases, where a connected device may be depended upon in emergency situations—such as alerting an elderly person's caregiver that they have suffered a fall or a heart attack—it is also crucial that the supporting systems are very resilient to DDoS or other attacks that could disrupt service.
How blockchain systems could help secure remote monitoring IoT devices:
- Blockchain cryptography ensures that only permitted parties can gain access to personal data, which is stored on the blockchain as a unique hash function (any change in the source data will create a different hash function, and a user must have a specific set of cryptographic keys to decode the hash function into the source data)
- Once patient data is recorded on the blockchain ledger (as a hash function), it becomes nearly impossible to tamper with since it would require gaining access to all stored copies across the distributed network
- The decentralized nature of blockchain means that IoT devices can interact directly with each other, without going through a centralized server (as most IoT connections do today), making it very difficult to launch DDoS and man-in-the-middle attacks
While blockchain could enhance IoT security in healthcare, these use cases are still in the early stages of development, and it is not yet clear whether blockchain will be the optimal tool to use. For digital health companies exploring how to ensure the security of remote monitoring devices, it is worth exploring blockchain, but only as part of a much more comprehensive end-to-end security strategy.
Conclusion
The five blockchain use cases outlined above demonstrate the technology's significant potential to transform healthcare delivery, from ensuring medication authenticity to securing patient data and streamlining administrative processes. What makes these applications particularly compelling is their ability to address multiple stakeholders' needs simultaneously—improving patient safety, reducing costs, enhancing data security, and increasing operational efficiency.
However, the path to widespread blockchain adoption in healthcare is not without challenges. Technical hurdles such as scalability, interoperability with existing systems, and energy consumption remain significant considerations. Regulatory frameworks are still evolving, and many healthcare organizations lack the technical expertise needed to implement and maintain blockchain solutions effectively.
Despite these obstacles, the momentum behind blockchain in healthcare continues to build. Early adopters are demonstrating measurable returns on investment, particularly in supply chain management and credential verification. As the technology matures and more healthcare organizations gain experience with blockchain implementations, we can expect to see accelerated adoption across the industry.
The future of blockchain in healthcare likely lies not in replacing existing systems entirely, but in creating secure, transparent bridges between disparate healthcare stakeholders. As these use cases continue to evolve and new applications emerge, blockchain has the potential to play a crucial role in creating a more connected, secure, and patient-centric healthcare ecosystem.
For healthcare organizations considering blockchain adoption, the key is to start with specific, well-defined use cases that address clear business problems rather than pursuing blockchain for its own sake. The organizations that will benefit most are those that view blockchain as one tool in a broader digital transformation strategy, always keeping patient outcomes and operational efficiency at the center of their decision-making process.