Tag: blockchain

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Blockchain Healthcare Providers

How the Public Health Can Maintain the Integrity of Medical Records with Blockchain Technology

There is a timeless issue that has always challenged healthcare institutions: how can accurate medical data be shared securely among the providers and patients who need access to it? Although the digital age has moved us far away from cumbersome paper records, electronic health records (EHRs) still result in inefficiencies. The interoperability among healthcare data systems has traditionally relied on three different methods of information exchange. Push is used when a provider sends information to another provider, Pull is used when a provider requests information from another provider, and View is used when a provider views information inside another provider’s system. Although technologically functional, each of these methods is used vary across institutions and geographic locations, subject to different state laws and local practice standards. This makes it difficult for policymakers to effectively govern the complicated transmission of medical records and there is no standardized audit trail that ensures the integrity of medical data from the point of generation to the point of use.

A broad spectrum of data is collected and utilized in healthcare and the integrity of this data is of the utmost importance. Health data identifies and tracks patients as they move through healthcare systems, informing providers and ensuring that the right patient receives the right care at the right time. It is absolutely vital for this information to be accurate, consistent, and complete. With the prevalence of EHRs, a lack of data transmission standards, and rising cybersecurity concerns, integrity-based threats to medical records are very possible. A malicious party, either inside or outside a healthcare institution, can modify data such as drug allergy information in an untraceable way. The inability to track and verify changes not only puts patients at risk but threatens institutional trust and credibility.

Fortunately, there is a fourth method of information exchange that can be employed to address these issues and ensure the integrity of medical records. Despite its origins related to Bitcoin and the associated skepticism of cryptocurrency, blockchain technology is quickly becoming a viable solution to various societal problems. Applications for its use are being explored across industries, such as financial services, food systems, government, and healthcare. Blockchain, also referred to as distributed ledger technology, is essentially an unchangeable, decentralized record of transactions. There is not a singular owner of information but a peer network in which multiple stakeholders contribute blocks of information that are chronologically connected to the ones before, creating a chain of blocks. The blocks are unable to be removed or edited, resulting in a comprehensive, tamper-proof record of information.

The opportunity for ensuring medical record integrity is clear. Once health data is generated and verified, it can be added to the blockchain with the confidence of knowing it cannot be tampered with. Having a blockchain system like Patientory’s in place creates a record of changes to health data that can be reviewed to see who made what changes and when. In addition to maintaining the integrity of health data, this provides a comprehensive health picture to providers and empowers patients to take charge of their medical records. As a result of Patientory’s blockchain technology, individuals will be able to efficiently access their aggregated health information and securely share it across institutions and healthcare providers, ensuring their accurate personal health data is used in the right way for the right reasons.

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Blockchain

The Value Potential of Blockchain in Healthcare: Q&A with Patientory’s Chrissa McFarlane

Prior to her participation on The Digital Value of Blockchain panel at the LSX World Congress USA 2018, Patientory CEO Chrissa McFarlane sat down for an interview with LSX, the network for life science executive leaders. She talked about her expectations for blockchain technology over the next few years and the possible hurdles blockchain may need to overcome to fully realize its potential in healthcare.

McFarlane also discusses her inspiration for Patientory, which was directly related to a need she saw in healthcare. “Specifically, the urgent need for secure, scalable, cost-effective solutions that deliver interoperability and improve health information exchange and access, while ensuring data security with the most effective technologies available today.”

Learn more about Chrissa’s passionate belief in blockchain as a powerful solution for healthcare in her full interview here.

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Patientory CEO Discusses Blockchain as a New Solution to Old Healthcare Problems

“One of the things with blockchain is it’s consortium based… so it’s really getting everyone incentivized and at the table, which doesn’t exist today. Here in the US, one of the biggest issues we have is interoperability which has been a problem for the past 15 years since the introduction of the EMR [Electronic Medical Record]. We definitely see blockchain as a starting point to really lay the groundwork and the foundation for a lot of the incentivization to happen.”

– Patientory CEO and Founder Chrissa McFarlane speaking at Bloomberg Live’s The Value of Data event on September 13th in New York

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Healthcare Providers Patients

Patientory CEO Speaks on How New Blockchain Solutions Can Solve Old Healthcare Problems

Last Thursday, September 13th, Bloomberg hosted a live event on ‘The Value of Data: How Emerging Technologies are Redefining Our Future.’ Patientory CEO and Founder Chrissa McFarlane was invited to speak on a panel discussing how blockchain can be utilized to solve global social challenges such as plastic pollution, foodborne illnesses, and consumer access to healthcare. This panel also featured representatives from IBM, Walmart, and the United Nations.

When people hear the word ‘blockchain’, they often think of cryptocurrency, a digital form of currency that has gained notoriety due to the growth of companies such as Bitcoin. This association of blockchain with cryptocurrency usually results in consumer skepticism and concern, as cryptocurrency is currently a very nascent and unregulated currency basis. Blockchain, however, has far greater applications than just cryptocurrency, specifically regarding security and transparency of data transactions and exchanges. To better understand these applications, it’s important to define what exactly blockchain is.

According to Forbes magazine, ‘Blockchain is a public register in which transactions between two users belonging to the same network are stored in a secure, verifiable and permanent way. The data relating to the exchanges are saved inside cryptographic blocks, connected in a hierarchical manner to each other. This creates an endless chain of data blocks — hence the name blockchain — that allows you to trace and verify all the transactions you have ever made. The primary function of a blockchain is, therefore, to certify transactions between people.”

From this definition, one can see how blockchain is a technology that allows users to securely and visibly complete transactions or data exchanges. One such use case can be found in the global food supply chain. Following a number of scandals in food production, most infamously the European horse meat scandal in 2013, where foods advertised as containing beef were found to contain undeclared or improperly declared horse meat, trust in global conglomerates’ ability to track the source of all its food products was at an all-time low. This mistrust led IBM to partner with Walmart, Unilever, Nestle and six other large companies in 2016 to release the Food Trust blockchain to track food through supply chains around the world. This created an immutable record of the food production cycle of every single item of produce on a blockchain. Consumers, as a result, could trust that they are buying and eating the produce they believe they are.

As seen in the food safety example, the implications of blockchain are powerful and can be just as powerful in healthcare as in food safety. Currently, consumer access to their healthcare data is a real challenge and a long-standing one at that. While gone are the days of paper charts, as much of healthcare data today is digitized and electronic, many healthcare providers do not have a way to share and grant access to such data for consumers securely. That’s where blockchain comes in.

In the healthcare industry, blockchain technology can help healthcare providers securely allow consumers to access and view their data, empowering consumers to have far greater ownership and management of their health. Additionally, blockchain enables healthcare providers to be compliant in meeting the GDPR and HIPAA regulations, two significant hurdles that have prevented consumers from successfully accessing their healthcare data.

Blockchain technology is not just about cryptocurrency or Bitcoin or fledging digital currency markets. It’s a solution that can indeed change the landscape of healthcare, not to mention many other global social problems. This technology has arrived – now is the time for healthcare providers and institutions to be open to adopting it, as the health of their patient communities depends on it.

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Healthcare Providers Patients

Addressing Healthcare Consumer Access and Data Ownership with Blockchain

 

The Challenge with Healthcare Data Ownership

The digital era has shepherded in new challenges and opportunities in healthcare. The shift from handwritten medical notes to electronic health records has raised important questions about access, shareability, and ownership of health-related information. Today, the vast majority of healthcare providers use electronic health records that afford consumers the ability to view and download health data created at those institutions.

Given that medical records rely on and are personal to individual consumers, it is intuitive to assume that those consumers own their medical data. However, due in part to intellectual property laws and the fact that medical records tend to include professional medical opinions, data ownership tends to legally reside with the creator or author of the record itself. The specific data ownership laws differ from state to state, but federal law provides consumers with rights related to the security and privacy of their health data.

Progress and Grey Areas in Democratizing Data

The progress made thus far in helping consumers access their health data will likely prove invaluable in helping to engage consumers in their healthcare and thereby empowering them to lead healthier lives. Consumers do indeed have the right not only to view their records but also to obtain those records in the format of their choosing. Providing consumers access to this health data also empower healthcare providers to get a more holistic view of consumer health-data, which can improve clinical decision-making. From a health perspective, consumer access to data appears to be headed in the right direction.

While consumer health is the priority in healthcare, another issue related to consumer data that has not yet been adequately solved is the use of consumer data as digital assets. If healthcare providers who own consumer data de-identify that data or remove the personal information attached to that data, then the data is no longer protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). What that means is that the owners of this valuable data can sell it without compensating the consumers, without whom, the data would not exist.

Ideally, consumers could not only access and review their medical records but also share it with healthcare providers and other third parties, and sell it to, for example, pharmaceutical companies or clinical research organizations. These goals are central to the White House’s Precision Medicine Initiative, which aims to make health data portable and conveniently shareable. However, even as consensus grows around the goals for consumer health data, there is one major challenge associated with this democratization of data ownership. That is, effectively decentralizing health data requires security measures that ensure that the added layer of transparency is not accompanied by an ability for people to alter the data.

Patientory Leverages Blockchain as a Solution

Patientory’s blockchain approach provides a solution to this healthcare data security challenge while also driving down costs through lower transaction fees and overhead. Like blockchain strategies that have been heavily and successfully adopted in the finance industry, Patientory’s blockchain will provide a decentralized database where information can be rapidly updated and accessible to a multitude of users. Patientory’s semantic technology will help healthcare providers and consumers alike as they work together to understand and improve health from cradle to grave.