Blockchain and healthcare have a powerful reason to get together: Data in desperate need of better care. Let’s explore some tests and projects that show the potential
Multiple industries are getting excited about the possible applications of blockchain technology. The excitement is almost always quickly followed by cautions not to get too optimistic, too quickly.
Take the automotive industry: Blockchain may be quite a good fit for carmakers and insurers. But as Red Hat technology evangelist Gordon Haff told us when we dug into the possibilities, there will be headwinds fueled by those who may be reluctant to buy in, along with considerable government policy and regulatory issues, security and privacy concerns, and the like.
The auto industry isn’t alone in those concerns. A longstanding industry with entrenched players? Considerable government policy and regulatory issues? Security and privacy concerns? Try asking a healthcare exec those questions – just make sure you’re not in a hurry to get somewhere else when you do.
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Yet, as in the automotive sector, there’s plenty of potential for blockchain in healthcare, and multiple pilots and other projects already underway.
“I believe in huge potential for healthcare moving to a blockchain world,” says Marta Pierkarska, director of ecosystem at Hyperledger. “It is one of the industries that has long not seen much innovation and now has an opportunity to go through a massive update.”
Pierkarska notes that potential doesn’t equal a guarantee – and that technologists by themselves can’t properly identify the pressing problems, much less solve them, in healthcare.
“It is only [through] a good collaboration with all the participants in the industry – patients, practitioners, suppliers, governments, insurers, and researchers – that we can build systems that will see adoption,” Pierkarska says.
Data problems everywhere
The biggest opportunity for blockchain in healthcare can be summed up in one word: Data. This includes patient data and how it’s recorded, shared, and stored, as well as an individual’s ownership of and access to their health information. It also includes how all forms of healthcare data move through processes and between organizations, which is far from optimal today.
“Two of the most prominent challenges in healthcare today are interoperability and data quality, and blockchain has the potential to address both,” says Jason O’Meara, senior director of architecture at Quest Diagnostics. “In addition to supporting data exchange, blockchain can be used to improve the quality and completeness of data and create a single source of truth for all participants.”
There could be longer-term benefits to that “single source of truth” if blockchain enables improved data flows to become a reality in a secure, private fashion.
Pierkarska notes that some key barriers to information-sharing standards in today’s healthcare industry have little to do with technology limitations.
“In today’s world, healthcare systems are not patient-centric,” she says. “Blockchain offers a potential [path] to changing that, by offering solutions that preserve privacy and allow for more trustworthy exchange of data, making electronic medical records more efficient and disintermediated.”
Pierkarska’s not alone in that perspective.
“As patients are necessarily at the center of the healthcare industry, blockchain-based solutions must first and foremost address identity on the blockchain, and here specifically an individual’s rights to his or her personal data,” says Christian Kameir, managing partner at the venture firm Sustany Capital. “Decentralizing treatment-related data will allow patients to share information across providers and potentially allow for anonymized aggregation – big data – that provides clinical evidence at scale to segment populations, manage health, and drive decisions.”
Blockchain healthcare projects in action
Let’s explore some actual applications and pilot projects that offer tangible indicators of how the healthcare industry and blockchain may fit together long-term, in four areas:
1. Electronic health records:
The industry-wide move to EHR (which aren’t precisely the same as electronic medical records, or EMR) was one of the biggest healthcare IT stories – or sagas, depending on who you ask – of this century. This is a key area where that “single source of trust” concept isn’t actually a reality, and where the safe exchange of information remains problematic.
Pierkarska points to the UK, where a company called Medicalchain recently announced a pilot partnership of its blockchain-based EHR system with a London-based medical group, The Groves Medical Group.
2. Health insurance:
Health insurance is a key opportunity; the insurance sector at large is one of the industries, like supply chain and finance, where there’s already significant blockchain exploration underway. In healthcare, specifically, that fundamental issue of trust is a driver.
“The move to blockchain is underway in health insurance processes and is essential to getting a bigger industry-wide automation play than what any single vendor can do with a centralized API approach, because no one wants to have to trust that one vendor,” Pierkarska says.
Change Healthcare is a Hyperledger member that is building, among other things, a cloud-based blockchain for claims processing, as well as a smart contract system for automating certain steps in the healthcare transaction cycle.
3. Administrative cost reduction:
Quest Diagnostics is part of an alliance with Optum, United Healthcare, Humana, and Multiplan, currently “testing the premise that administrative costs and data quality can be improved by sharing changes in provider information across organizations with a blockchain,” O’Meara says.
Let’s quantify the value of that use case: According to O’Meara, $2.1 billion is spent annually across the healthcare system maintaining provider data.
“Early results from the pilot are showing promising results,” O’Meara says. “We’ve found that blockchain is most useful when loosely coupled organizations want to confidently share information and automate mutually beneficial processes. A permissioned blockchain, like the one used in our alliance, is an excellent foundation for that kind of collaboration.”
4. Healthcare supply chain:
Supply chain management has become one of the interesting real-world use cases for blockchain. The same principles that make it a fit there are generating related interest in healthcare supply chains.
Pierkarska points to a Hyperledger Healthcare Working Group proof of concept for improving the traceability and transparency of donor milk from donor to recipient.
The massive prescription pharmaceuticals business is another supply chain with blockchain potential.
“Another team is working on trusted prescriptions: It’s enough for your doctor to prescribe the medicine once and put that on a blockchain. No need for re-issuance every time you need a new order,” Pierkarska says. “[There is also] the [related] case of tracking pharmaceuticals and its supply chain through a blockchain. Here we can receive a substantial reduction in drug discovery costs, prescription pharma abuse, and pharma supply chain corruption.”
Cultural challenges
As in other industries, blockchain isn’t a fit for everything. Pierkarska notes that blockchain should be thought of as part of the solution to certain industry challenges rather than the whole issue. Blockchain in healthcare will not be a magic wand.
“If your system has requirements for removal of data and not simply introducing new versions of it, if you are not willing to redesign your system to adhere to blockchain rules, or if [your existing] system] simply works great without it, then don’t do it,” Pierkarska advises.
O’Meara, another believer in blockchain’s opportunities in healthcare, notes that the challenges to widespread adoption are as much (if not more) cultural as technical. In the near term, it’s more likely to be a complementary rather than a revolutionary technology.
“At this time, we are looking at blockchain as a way to supplement our current systems and enable companies to work together in new ways,” O’Meara says. “As the blockchain standards and underlying technologies become more robust, additional opportunities will present themselves. It’s important to keep an open mind, be willing to explore, and to share findings for the benefit of the industry.”
Date: November 20, 2018
Source: The Enterprisers project