Introduction

It has been only three months since the outbreak of the deadly Coronavirus which is supposed to have emerged from the “wet market” of Wuhan, China.

As the number of Coronavirus infections has reached 700000+, researchers are trying to understand what makes it spread so easily.

The spread of novel Coronavirus is affecting all the sectors including hospitality, apparel, retail, real estate, and many more, hence, impacting the economic growth of all the countries.

Acknowledging its dangerous effects, most of the countries have declared lockdown to prevent further spread. In these critical situations, healthcare is the only sector that is facing the highest number of problems. But like always, Blockchain technology is here at the rescue of the Healthcare sector. To fulfill the need of the hour, techies and entrepreneurs across the world are now looking at leveraging blockchain technology in the healthcare industry to help prevent the spread of the virus. Can Blockchain really prevent pandemics?

What Are The Major Challenges of COVID-19?

There are various challenges associated with Covid-19 such as:

• One foremost issue is how prepared Healthcare sectors are to respond to this outbreak.
• Keeping the data of infectious patients to stop epidemics.
• The urgency for developing better diagnostics, vaccines, and targeted treatments.
• No sufficient measures to adopt in a breakdown.
• Inaccurate information and false theories spread through social media platforms.

Implementing Blockchain solutions can treat Coronavirus. Many companies have recognized the potential of Blockchain technology and started to build solutions to track donations, drug supply chains, medical data, and identifying symptoms of Covid-19.

Blockchain technology offers security, transparency, and decentralization to track disease, monitor patients, treatment histories, equipment requirements, supply chain, etc in a more accurate and efficient way.

Most importantly, Blockchain will enable medical authorities to easily keep track of virus activity, patients, suspected new cases, and contain it in real-time.

At present, data and medical information of patients are spread across different departments and systems and therefore, can not be accessed when needed. But if the data is stored in Blockchain, it is secure and can be accessed anytime from anywhere in the world.

There are millions of dollars being donated in the healthcare sector for the public but donors know nothing about the whereabouts of those donations. With the Blockchain technology, donors can track their donations until they have been received by the victims. Transparency is the key component of Blockchain which notifies the general public how their donations have been used and its progress.

Blockchain tracks all the information and data, particularly for infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID-19 and it can manage the crisis. Blockchain could instantly alert the public about the Coronavirus and also provide recommendations to contain it. Blockchain provides the healthcare sector with such a platform where all the concerned people can update each other about the situation and prevent it from worsening further.

Blockchain is also beneficial in tracking drug supply chains. The tamper-proof blockchain-based platforms can be used to review and record supplies, and logistics of epidemic prevention materials.

To conclude, Blockchain can not prevent the emergence of new viruses but it can instantly alert the public about disease outbreaks. Therefore, enabling Blockchain technology in the Healthcare sector can help prevent these pandemics by providing the early detection of epidemics, tracing medical supply chains, and managing the crisis of outbreaks and treatment.