The EU Blockchain Observatory published its fifth report under the headline “Blockchain Applications in the Healthcare Sector.” The document highlights the importance of distributed ledger technology for the European healthcare sector, which faces a number of challenges on its route to the “Healthcare 4.0” revolution.

The 66-page document was announced on the EU Blockchain Observatory's Twitter on April 11. Its authors take an optimistic perspective on the implementation of blockchain technology in healthcare, noting its compatibility with the core principles of “Healthcare 4.0”, such as interoperability, virtualization, decentralization, real-time capability, service orientation and modularity. Below are 7 key takeaways from the report.

As the healthcare industry becomes more knowledge-based, it gets more complex — the abundant variety of tools and methods also makes it prone to errors. Hence, having a flexible and digitized system of knowledge and data management is of crucial importance. Such a system should facilitate easy and user-friendly access for patients, whose interest in accessing their own health information grows rapidly.

And, of course, there is an old problem that didn’t go away — the data stored in the current healthcare systems are often siloed. As the report goes, a properly designed healthcare application on a distributed ledger can alleviate many of these concerns.

When talking about healthcare, some centralization is desired, but efficient centralization is hard to deliver. DLT thus becomes an almost inevitable solution. For example, as the report highlights, distributed ledgers could help monitor the use of medical equipment by healthcare facilities and identify deficiency or surplus of devices in