The hype around blockchain — even in healthcare — is steadily increasing.
A new survey from Black Book examined how the industry is approaching, investing in and deploying the technology.
The Q3 survey included 88 payers and 276 provider technology executives, managers and IT specialists.
The results make it clear that the healthcare field sees the value in blockchain. Ninety-three percent of managed care organization participants and 70 percent of hospital respondents said the distributed ledger technology shows promise for solving interoperability problems. Additionally, 90 percent of IT specialists and medical group managers said it can improve connectivity and patient record sharing issues.
To some, the concept of blockchain is dauntingly complex. However, Black Book found that most survey participants grasp its capabilities. Twenty-nine percent of hospital leaders and 82 percent of health insurance executives have a general understanding of the technology.
“Executive blockchain education has shifted from Blockchain 101 to selecting the appropriate healthcare blockchain technology protocols,” Doug Brown, Black Book managing partner, said in a news release.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Due to such interest and knowledge, 76 percent of payers in the survey said they’re either considering deploying or currently in the process of implementing blockchain solutions. Ninety-eight percent of payer respondents with plans of more than 500,000 members are currently considering deploying it, while 14 percent of them are involved in trial deployments right now.
Additionally, 70 percent of payer respondents of all sizes anticipate blockchain being integrated into their systems by the first quarter of 2019.
On the other hand, providers seem a bit hesitant to adopt. Nineteen percent of hospital executives are considering deploying or currently implementing blockchain solutions. And a mere 9 percent of provider health systems and organizations have set plans to implement blockchain by Q2 of 2018.
Why so few? Eighty-eight percent of provider leadership participants said the undetermined cost of such solutions makes them cautious to set a timeframe or deadline for potential deployment.
As part of the survey, participants who were adopting or considering adopting initiatives were asked to rank blockchain vendors based on their offerings. Eleven companies stood above the rest, scoring above 9.0 on the Black Book scale of 1.0 to 10.0.
The vendors include Blockchain Health, Bloq, Burst IQ, Gem Health, Guardtime, Hashed Health, HealthCombix, IBM Blockchain, Pokitdok, Tierion and YouBase.
With headquarters ranging from San Francisco to Chicago to New York City, these companies are working to solve numerous issues in the healthcare environment, including clinical trial management, scheduling, IoT data collection and claims processing.
Photo: nonchai, Getty Images
