Healthcare reform has often been proposed but has rarely been accomplished. The country’s first attempt was the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) of the 20th century. Speaker of the House Thaddeus Sweet vetoed the bill in committee.
In 1965, after 20 years of congressional debate, President Lyndon B. Johnson enacted legislation that introduced Medicare and Medicaid into law as part of the Great Society Legislation.
Various legislations have been introduced since 1996, including the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that provide health insurance protection for some employees when they leave their jobs.
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare, includes:
• The Affordable Health Care for America Act
• The Patient Protection Act,
• The healthcare-related sections of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act and the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act
Since becoming law, additional rules and regulations have expanded upon the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care for America Act.
Technology will enhance specialist medical care
By 2022, technology will give clinicians easy access to referral templates and ‘one click away’ specialist advice and guidance for GPs, which will prevent many patients from requiring referral for an appointment. Triaging some specialist referrals with photos and questionnaires will allow some patients to have entirely virtual assessments.
In 2023, diagnostic imaging networks will enable the rapid transfer of clinical images from care settings close to the patient to the relevant specialist clinician. This will help improve timely image reporting, as well as the development of large clinical data banks to fuel research and innovation.
Healthcare and nutrition plans will be personalized for the individual
By 2025, data will be collected by your wearable or implantable health monitoring device, and by analyzing your gut bacteria, future dietitians will be able to tailor a diet plan that better fits your unique DNA and metabolism. We will also one day apply this approach to a genome-customized exercise routine.
Blood samples will be taken at birth and analysed to identify the health issues your DNA makes you predisposed to. A personalized ‘healthcare solutions’ will be created detailing the custom vaccines, gene therapies and surgeries you will need over the next 20-50 years to avoid serious health complications.
In 2030, this information will be collected using intuitive tools, that will be used to capture data that empowers clinicians and reduces the administrative burden. Clinical, genomic and other data will be linked, to support the development of new treatments. Data will be made secure through the implementation of security, monitoring systems and staff education.
Why Blockchains Will Transform Healthcare
The overall vision for blockchain to disrupt healthcare in the future would be to solve many issues that plague the industry today to create a common database of health information that doctors and providers could access no matter what electronic medical system they used, higher security and privacy, less admin time for doctors so there’s more time to spend on patient care, and even better sharing of research results to facilitate new drug and treatment therapies for disease.
While blockchain principles were first applied in the financial world as the technology that allowed Bitcoin to operate, it has applications for many industries including healthcare. Blockchain in healthcare today are distributed systems that log transaction records on linked blocks and store them on an encrypted digital ledger. There is no one central administrator, but it has unprecedented security benefits because records are spread across a network of replicated databases that are always in sync. Users can only update the block they have access to, and those updates get replicated across the network. All entries are time and date stamped.
