Essay Sample on Healthcare Management and Leadership

Growing up in Nigeria, as a young man, I have seen firsthand the constant decay of health infrastructure, fake medicines, structural failure of health systems, and the perpetual cycle of ineffective or absent public healthcare policies.

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I now wish to pursue a Ph.D. in Healthcare Management and Leadership at the Institute of Health Management & Research University at Jaipur offers what I need. India and Nigeria have similarities; they both have the largest population in the world that are significantly diversified with similar challenges. I also admire the commitment of the Institute for an improved healthcare system through better management and technological innovation. And it is with this that I wish to focus my research on the Current State of healthcare blockchain technology in India and its potential in Nigeria.

Currently, blockchain in India it's at the development stage as private companies are partnering with healthcare facilities to curb the high rates of deaths due to cases of maladaptive practices in the issuance of medication and diagnosis as a result of insufficient information on patient's medical history.

Blockchain technology in Nigeria has the potential to revolutionize how medical care is practiced. The cost of operation will significantly be reduced as paper and file will be a thing of the past, patients will be diagnosed factoring in their past medical history, and accountability will be enhanced as documents will be hard to tamper with.

Application Essay

Growing up in Nigeria, it always baffled me as to why a country with an abundance of natural resources would experience abject poverty with ills and decay crippling the health sector. Growing up, I learned that it was due to poor leadership and management; this instilled in me the desire to demand change. Nigeria suffers a wide range of healthcare problems that range from health infrastructure to structural failure of health systems and policies. Having had the opportunity to live and work outside Nigeria for the past twenty-two years, I am confident that the experience of a better healthcare system should be felt by every Nigerian.

It's in that regard that I am writing to express my interest in pursuing a Ph.D. in Healthcare Management and Leadership at the Institute of Health Management & Research University (IIHMR) in Jaipur. I admire the desire and strife of the institution and its commitment to improving healthcare through technological innovation, leadership, and management. I wish to focus my research on the Current State of blockchain in the healthcare sector in India and its potential future in the application in Nigeria's healthcare system, and IIHMR is the best for that.

Blockchain, in simple language it is a system of recording time-stamped data that are stored by different computers owned by other individuals or entities hence making the data impossible to be altered, breached, and transparent. Since blockchain has no central authority, the data is, therefore, open to the public to view and use, making it transparent, ensuring accountability, and dramatically lowering the risk of fraud (Stirling et al., 2020).

Blockchain technology in the healthcare system has the potential to offer solutions; including lowering the cost of storing and sharing data, securing patient medical information, aid unlocking of genetic codes by healthcare researchers, enabling the fixing of errors in provider directories, and also in managing the supply chains of medical equipment and medicine.

Currently, most Indian healthcare facilities use the electronic health record (EHS) as plans are underway to develop blockchain technology, involving blockchain companies partnering with healthcare facilities. EHS is unstandardized since different healthcare facilities across India use other systems that have different vocabulary and codes hence making it difficult to achieve interoperability. India has a large population with a wide range of diversity; therefore, monitoring and managing patient data without breaches and mishandling require many resources to work (Nehra et al., 2020).

Blockchain technology will revolutionize the healthcare sector in Nigeria. The system will be able to link past patients' medical history hence will significantly reduce deaths caused by wrong diagnosis and treatment. The course will also eliminate the use of fake drugs as patients will be linked to legally registered pharmacists reducing. The use of paper and files in healthcare facilities will be a thing of the past. Hence it will free up funds for other services. The purchase and issuance of healthcare equipment and medicine will be documented without the possibility of tampering, thus will increase accountability.

Summary

Most hospitals and healthcare facilities, in the past twenty years, still use the same methods and procedures. The use of papers and files to record data has proven to be costly and more prone to data breaches and alterations. Although the industry has a large number of innovations, one of the key innovations that the industry has been struggling with is in the horizontal innovations that link all data universally.

Blockchain has emerged with the ability to revolutionize healthcare services and move it to be a more patient-centric system, where the patient's entire lifecycle is digitized more securely. The information will aid Health experts to diagnose patients more accurately factoring in their past medical records.

Data from healthcare providers will merge into one system in compliance with data protection laws. Medical practitioners will be able to verify the authenticity of every data keyed into the system. Patients, on the other hand, will have more knowledge and control over their personal medical information.

In Nigeria, blockchain technology has the potential of solving its significant problems, as the system will be able to reduce costs of operation, enhance accountability, and also safeguard patient's private information.

References

Nehra, V., Sharma, A. K., & Tripathi, R. K. (2020). Blockchain Implementation for Internet of Things Applications. In Handbook of Research on Blockchain Technology (pp. 113-132). Academic Press.

Stirling, A., Tubb, T., Reiff, E. S., Grotegut, C. A., Gagnon, J., Li, W. ... & Goldstein, B. A. (2020). Identified themes of interactive visualizations overlayed onto EHR data: an example of improving birth center operating room efficiency. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(5), 783-787.