Paper Title
The Global Picture of Future Healthcare: Challenges and Solutions (Covid-19 Case Study)
Abstract
Numerous technological inventions have surfaced over the past decade but one that has been tagged as
revolutionary and disruptive is blockchain technology owing to its capability to transform diverse sectors of the economy
including healthcare. The current healthcare infrastructure is bedeviled with a myriad of challenges that became evident
during COVID-19 pandemic including data centralization leading to information silos, non-resiliency and huge cost to health
institutions and patients alike. Other challenges include system interoperability, rigid and limited payment modules, opaque
processes, Cyber-attacks, downtimes, delays, resource allocation, fatigue culminating into human error, financial
misappropriations, and fraud, as well as counterfeit drugs, among others. Blockchain, cryptocurrency and distributed storage
technology hold much prospects in resolving the challenges associated with the current healthcare system by providing
decentralized identification for patients, patient-centric data ownership and control mechanisms, secured global access to
Electronic Health Records (EHR) to facilitate data sharing among health facilities, decentralized medical research data
repository to foster knowledge sharing among healthcare professionals, efficient and flexible payment modalities, automated
processes using smart contracts, as well as robust, transparent, immutable and auditable chain of events potentially averting
fraud and counterfeiting among others. During covid 19 pandemic, some countries have utilized the predictive power of
ITC (big data) to keep the global spread of the pandemic in check. This is just one of many examples of how technology can
be wielded under the banner of e-Health to help care and save millions of people around the world. Besides some socioeconomic
changes are also required for the implementation of new technology and its smooth processing.