Many organizations are examining the potential of healthcare blockchain technology to address difficult IT problems. One such health system is AdventHealth.
Many organizations are examining the potential of healthcare blockchain technology to address difficult IT problems.
One such health system is AdventHealth.
“The IT people at AdventHealth have been actively assessing what blockchain can do to improve the systems they are running,” explained Roger Smith, PhD, chief technology officer at the AdventHealth Nicholson Center.
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AdventHealth is a faith-based, non-profit healthcare system headquartered in Altamonte Springs, FL, which operates facilities in nine U.S. states. The Adventist Health System was rebranded AdventHealth at the beginning of 2019. It has 45 hospital campuses and more than 8,200 licensed beds and serves more than 5 million patients annually.
For the most part, the IT team “is looking at the problems we have tried to solve with other tools and trying to figure out if blockchain would improve the situation,” Smith told HITInfrastructure.com.
“I work with our CIO for the central Florida region, and we’ve had discussions about what blockchain could do to solve the problems we already know that we have,” he said.
Smith declined to get into specifics about the blockchain applications that AdventHealth is working on.
In general, Smith expects blockchain to take off in healthcare over the next few years.
“We’ve seen enough implementations and presentations at HIMSS that we can think about blockchain without thinking about Bitcoin,” he said.
“Blockchain presents itself in lots of different formats, some of which enables you to get around the issues that you have with scalability and transaction speed in cryptocurrencies. We’re starting to think about blockchain as an umbrella term for lots of different implementations that are coming out of the hyperledger community and the financial community. It seems every big tech company is offering their own unique version of blockchain,” Smith said.
HEALTHCARE BLOCKCHAIN USE CASES
Smith laid out some promising use cases for healthcare blockchain, including physician credentialing, patient identification, and doctor insurance affiliation.
He cited the Professional Credentials Exchange (ProCredEx) initiative as a positive use of healthcare blockchain. Members of the initiative include Hashed Health, National Government Services, Spectrum Health, WellCare Health Plans, Accenture, and The Hardenbergh Group.
ProCredEx’s goal is to improve the efficiency of the credentialing process by facilitating the secure, trusted exchange of verified credentials between exchange members using blockchain technology.
“When we are interviewing a new surgeon, a new nurse, a new radiation tech, or whatever position, candidates have to provide credentials that verify that they graduated medical school, that they completed residency, that they took all their necessary exams and passed them, that they’re current with their boards, that they have had a certain number of education credits, that they have a certificate in managing this radiation machine or know how to place a central line, or whatever,” Smith related.
“Getting all of those credentials verified takes weeks or months. Some of these people might be hanging around for three months. They know they’re getting a job, but they just can’t come in and practice because we haven’t verified their credentials. We can’t allow them to provide services to patients,” he noted.
“ProCredEx is a blockchain system where the owner of the credential places it on the blockchain so that it is accessible when the owner, meaning the clinician, gives a key to an employer to unlock it. It’s like this big database of credentials in the sky, but they are all encrypted so you can’t read them unless the owner gives you the key to unlock them … We could unlock six or eight credentials all at once, verify them, and say you’re good to go. You can start tomorrow,” Smith said.
In terms of patient identification, big hospitals often have a patient’s name and other information in different formats and locations without an easy way to link them up.
“For example, Mary Jones is somewhere in our databases as five different people because of the way she came into the system. We can’t match Mary Jones number one with Mary Jones number two, even though they are the same person,” Smith said.
“If there were a blockchain system, Mary Jones could walk in and say, ‘Let me connect you to my health records.’ When you go to provide services, the blockchain immediately matches the services you are about to provide with Mary Jones’ last visits to the pharmacy, emergency walk-in clinic, or whatever location. So, we would know her history much more completely than we do today,” he said.
Blockchain can also help patients keep track of the insurance affiliations of their doctor.
“When you call your doctor to make an appointment, that doctor may or may not still be in your insurance plan. Doctors change their health insurance affiliations, which insurance plans they take, and which tier they are in each insurance plan. Keeping an up-to-date record of which doctors are affiliated with your insurance plan and at what tier level is a challenging problem. You might have called your insurance to verify that this doctor was in tier one of your insurance program last year, and this year you just assume he or she still is tier one, even though he or she may not be,” Smith related.
“You wouldn’t find out until you got the bill at tier two or tier three, and then it’s too late. Some hospitals are trying to get their doctors and their insurance affiliations lined up on blockchain, and when a record is changed, it immediately changes globally,” he said.
Smith recommended that any blockchain discussion at a hospital should include an IT person who understands how the network architecture works, someone who delivers care and speaks for the patient, and a technologist who understands how blockchain works.
“If you have all three of those people in the room for the blockchain discussion, each one has something to contribute that the others don’t. I think that would help a great deal,” he said.
Date: September 11, 2019
Source: HITInfrastructure
