How the Medical Industry Can Benefit from AI and Blockchain Technology

In this day and age, data protection is paramount whether the information belongs to an individual, a business or a government entity. However, transparency is equally important to verify identities, conduct transactions efficiently, and provide an honest overview of projects.

At first glance, data protection and transparency seem to contradict one another. But looking at them closely, both can be achieved without them clashing against each other. And the means to efficiently and effectively reach this outcome relies on two things: blockchain technology and artificial intelligence.

Now, combining these two innovations will yield significant improvements in different sectors. But for the purpose of precision, we’re going to apply it to just one field: the medical sector.

Why this? Well, because both AI and blockchain are currently being used in this area but they're not utilized in combination with each other. Not yet anyway.

As things stand, one of the uses of artificial intelligence in the medical field is how it can precisely diagnose patients much more accurately than human clinicians can. Take for example the “smart” Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool created by Intermountain Healthcare which is capable of identifying patients who are at a high risk of heart failure.

The tool can analyze information from over 25 various documents stored in a healthcare provider’s database and create suggestions as to which patients need extra care. The problem here is that the patients' information is available to healthcare professionals even though they don’t have anything to do with the patients and their recovery.

This increases the chance of leaking sensitive information on the client, which happens more often than one might think since human errors are among the top reasons for such blunders. This is where blockchain comes in. The technology will be able to control and record who is accessing the data of particular clients and grant special access to healthcare professionals who are overseeing their recovery.

This doesn’t just protect the information of the patients but also increases their trust in the medical institution they’re currently admitted to as they can see who is accessing their information as well as the purpose behind the examination of their documents. With blockchain and AI, clients can rest assured that the data they give to their healthcare providers will stay in the ledger and in the hands of those who will help them recover.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, the application of both these technologies covers different sectors. The question now is how exactly these innovations will be applied in tandem to work out solutions to existing problems.