Are you aware of the digitization of health information and what that could mean for a technology like blockchain? In 2009, with the passage of the HITECH Act, electronic health records (EHRs) started to emerge as the standard for healthcare organizations. HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) provides incentives for hospitals and other eligible organizations to digitize records, and it fines those that don’t comply. All of a sudden, people‘s health records became data ”valuable data.
Now, there’s excitement about how applications that use AI can interact with this data. AI can do wonderful things with health data, such as note trends, make predictions, and even make recommendations for patient care. But there’s an important caveat: Patient data is protected by HIPAA (Health Information Portability and Accountability Act). The security of this data is paramount, and along with HIPAA there are institutional, local, and state standards when it comes to sharing data. Simply put, the issue of security does not allow the medical industry to unleash the full power of analytics and its attendant technologies. That could change because of blockchain.
Blockchain and EHR
Currently, the exchange and access of patient info is lacking an umbrella approach. Blockchain could easily become the unifying technology because it’s already set up to facilitate secure transactions. Only those with the cryptographic keys would be able to do anything with patient data.
As it stands, the EHR system has three modes with which data is shared. The first mode is called push. Push is essentially the sharing of information from one provider to another. Providers use an email client called Direct. But this system has some problems. Imagine you move to a new city or a small town that doesn’t have a provider in your network. If you have an emergency, your information is stranded at your previous hospital until that hospital approves a release of information ”but you need it now. There’s also no guarantee the data will maintain its integrity. We all know email has potential security issues.
The second mode is pull. You go to the new hospital in the new town, and they make a request to pull your information from where it is currently housed. But these things can be complicated. What if you never ask them to pull that information to begin with ”they just deem it necessary? Whether or not they are able to get that info entirely depends on their interaction with your previous provider; there isn’t a standardized permission procedure.
The third is view. Within your provider network, various clinicians can view your records, but the security measures for transferring records are not standardized. In other words, one clinician could simply use GMail to send your records to another clinician. A hacker could hack into a clinician’s account and request the info without providing proof of identity.
Blockchain provides a means through which the medical community could resolve all standardization and security issues. All of your information would be available on the blockchain, with a clear trail as to who recorded it, when they recorded it, and any other relevant information. You would be in charge of authorizing access to each provider. Essentially, providers would not have to be the middlemen of healthcare data as they are now, facilitating input, transfer, and access on a case-by-case basis. Instead, each provider would simply input ongoing records into their database, which in turn would communicate that data onto the secure blockchain ledger. Then, you would authorize access.
The Transformative Impact of Blockchain in Healthcare
The current EHR system is a lot like CT scans were in the past. The computed tomography (CT) machine was a brilliant idea that earned its inventors a Nobel Peace Prize in the 70s, but at first it wasn’t efficient with data. As a result, the technology didn’t earn a full-time place in hospitals until the 80s. The original machines couldn’t generate and process data fast enough.
Similarly, EHR doesn’t handle data efficiently because it doesn’t let the medical community process patient records efficiently. Once CT scanners were able to process data more effectively, doctors started using the images they generate to save lives. Blockchain could do the same with EHR. Through blockchain, all doctors could access an accurate picture of your medical history. Combined with AI analytics, they could create a predictive picture of your medical future.
One way this could work is by providing a new kind of access. Data scientists would be able to instruct AI algorithms to collect health information related to demographics and conditions from the blockchain, without any sort of personal identification coming into play. Then, doctors could instruct AI programs to compare your information with that of millions of people who have had the same condition. Then, AI could present accurate data on success rate of treatments. It could predict the likelihood of your condition getting worse if you follow a certain prescription path and it could predict what type of treatment will most likely make you better.
At the outset, blockchain EHR will simply make it easier for providers across the board to follow HIPAA and access accurate information about your history right away. When you’re faced with an emergency, you don’t want to wait to access information about your medical history that could save your life. With blockchain, you wouldn’t have to.
