Blockchain and AI: Disruptive Digital Technologies in Designing the Potential Growth of Healthcare Industries

Abstract

Health is always considered a valuable possession. The potential benefits of integrating disruptive technologies together have created several milestones in revolutionizing health care and in global economic growth. As a 10% increase in life expectancy could raise economic growth by 0.4% yearly, the healthcare sector strives hard to increase life expectancy. The deployment of technological advances in the healthcare sector is inevitable to provide high quality service to mankind and cannot be postponed. Healthcare records are sensitive and involve more attention in terms of privacy, security, interoperability, and reliability while advanced technologies are deployed for improving the functionalities in this sector. Blockchain is deployed in distributed database applications to provide solutions for complexity and privacy challenges in all sectors, especially in healthcare. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), counterfeit drugs and medical devices may cause harm to patients and fail to treat the disease they are meant for which leads to a loss of confidence in medicines, healthcare providers, and healthcare systems. In addition, substandard and falsified medical products are predominant in the illegal street markets, hospitals, clinics, websites, etc. Thousands of fake online pharmacies were reported to have shut down in INTERPOL operation in a report. Due to Corona and a massive surge in requests for help, counterfeit medicines and other essentials for Corona therapy are being sold in large quantities. People can purchase drugs without a prescription on unregulated websites and fraudulent websites, which makes these products widely available across the world. The outbreak of COVID-19 has illustrated the important need to establish resilient, robust, and reliable patient and healthcare services. An ideal solution for curbing this scenario is to have digital solutions using blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure supply chain integrity along with data intelligence to function more efficiently and effectively. While blockchain technologies enhance the privacy, immutability, and security of patient records, AI-assisted detection or diagnosis is safer, more accurate, and faster than existing solutions. Traditional healthcare systems are vulnerable, since outdated methods are used to store, maintain, and protect patient data, whereas blockchain uses immutable records to provide a complete, trustworthy solution to store, retrieve, and track the medical history of patients by authorized users. The decentralized distributed nature of Blockchain can be leveraged to manage a shared ledger of encrypted health records such that all copies of the ledger are verified and synchronized between every node that is a part of the Blockchain. Digitization of telehealth by deploying blockchain technology introduces numerous possibilities and opportunities. Provenance of clinical data, legitimacy of users seeking patient data, managing identities of devices used for remote patient monitoring, preserving patient anonymity, and payment automation are some of the efficient services which add laurels to blockchain technologies. Using AI and machine learning algorithms, clinicians can identify patterns in healthcare data and take actionable steps to improve patient care. Consequently, blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies are enabling efficient healthcare accessibility and improving care coordination and treatment outcomes. The European healthcare sector has highlighted the importance of blockchain’s distributed ledger technology in facing the challenges on its route to the “Healthcare 4.0” revolution. In a research report by Research and Market, the global telehealth and telemedicine market is expected to grow by 26.6% CAGR during the forecast period from an estimated USD 87.7billion in 2022 to USD 285.7billion by 2027. A review of blockchain and AI in health care, blockchain framework, applications of blockchain and machine learning in clinical research, features of Limoverse, the metaverse for health and wellbeing, and impact and future prospects of the healthcare ecosystem are discussed in this chapter.