NFTs are just more than a digital art offering jpegs of animated monkeys in sunglasses and striped shirts. Its potential is being utilized across many industries including Healthcare.

For those who are still unaware of the term, NFTs, or non fungible tokens, are created using blockchain technology. The technology first made a splash in the art world as a platform to buy and sell digital art backed by a digital contract. Entrepreneurs are exploring if NFT digital contracts are useful in other marketplaces as well.

NFTs have far more potential than you are thinking. They are being utilized within the healthcare industry & could let patients own & control their healthcare data. Wondering how?

NFTs could actually help citizens track and control who accesses their personal health records. It further helps patients monetize their health data & even their blood. 

Yes, you heard it right! Users can now turn their medical and health data into NFT and sell them to pharmaceutical & other healthcare companies to earn money.

Continue reading this blog to know further about how NFTs are revolutionizing the healthcare industry and how you could control your healthcare data and earn out of it.

Also Read: NFT in Games

NFTs in Healthcare- What the Study Reveals?

NFTs could offer transparency and accountability to the exchange of personal data and could improve public trust in the drug industry.

As per Amy McGuire, director of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor-

“Using NFTs for health data is the perfect storm between a huge marketplace that’s evolving and the popularity of cryptocurrency, but there are also many ethical, legal and social implications to consider.” 

The researcher further explains the role of  NFTs in Healthcare-

When your health data is minted as NFTs, the information will come with an inherent feature to be tracked and you would be able to either sell or hold. Others would be prohibited to use that data without your permission since you are the sole owner of the data, as certified by the NFT authentication. What more? The NFT also offers a feature to the owner to earn money whenever a transaction occurs with the data. 

The research also mentions that it’s too early to say exactly what health data NFTs will look like in practice. It all depends on how quickly other technologies can keep up, and what opportunities they offer to interact with smart contracts.

Also Read: Developing a NFT Gaming Platform like Crypto Dynasty

What Role could NFTs play in Healthcare?

Non-fungible tokens or NFTs could be used to transform the way patients gain access to their personal health records. Wondering about how NFTs could play a big role with healthcare data? 

NFTs with their unique identifier can link to the asset’s online location. The technology, when applied to medical data, could de-identify patient-controlled copies of a person’s health information. 

For now, Patients are disenfranchised when it comes to their personal health records. The data is freely distributed & commercialized by big companies. By selling your genetic data, these companies are making millions without sharing a penny with you.

With the introduction of NFTs, patients would get the ownership of their health records through its blockchain ledger. This would further allow patients to track the sale of their data, giving them the opportunity to stop it or sell it themselves.

Are NFTs the future of patient data?

NFTs in Healthcare are still a work in progress, and a lot has to be sorted out. NFT technology is already being used in hospital projects and clinical trials.

“It would be really nice if all the parties involved could think about how we could mutually benefit from the exchange of personal health information,” Kostick-Quenet, Bioethicist and medical at Baylor College of Medicine, said. “That way, it wouldn’t be biased toward just a few players, and Profits don’t all flow in one direction, either. “

Conclusion

The integration of NFTs in the healthcare industry is still under process. This could be challenging too as NFTs are still vulnerable to data and security flaws. Also, disputes over intellectual property rights aren’t widely understood yet. But, researchers still suggest that they have the potential to transform the healthcare industry. 

Note: The article is based on the research conducted by the Baylor College of Medicine, Texas US, and was first published in the Journal Science.