Vinil Menon, chief technology officer at CitiusTech, a health IT specialist, in Princeton, North Jersey, shares his prediction of the use of blockchain by health in 2019 and what the IT leaders of hospital and health systems need know.
The answers have been slightly modified for clarity and length.
Question: where is now the blockchain in the health sector and how will it develop in 2019?
Vinil Menon: Blockchain has real implications for access to health data and sharing, and the healthcare sector will likely be the next big adotter of this technology. However, adoption has so far been largely limited to pilots. While health organizations continue to grapple with the complex challenges of data management, analysis, and regulatory compliance, it may be some time before their investments in blockchain technology become significantly large.
In the course of the year, the blockchain will entail considerable progress in relation to the cases of use of interoperability. We will probably see blockchain used to allow access to diverse and distributed health information through a heterogeneous mix of actors, patients, providers, payers and life science organizations. Blockchain will also contribute to the integration of external suppliers who could perform artificial intelligence and machine learning models on this data for a variety of use cases such as real evidence or genomic analysis.
Q: What do you think will be the most significant blockchain applications in the healthcare sector over the next five years?
VM: Key cases of use of the Blockchain today develop around the notions of an immutable ledger and a decentralized trust. Blockchain helps to address trust in data access and issues of consent on the origin, access and transmission of data, which have had an impact on interoperability in the past and are preventing data sharing between companies. It is likely that the Blockchain trust-based model will gain ground as a more transparent and persistent way to achieve a continuous, secure and universal data exchange between the healthcare organizations and the patients they serve.
Q: What do the blockbenches of blockchain hospitals and healthcare systems know today?
VM: Hospitals and health systems that consider blockchain an opportunity must first tackle the immediate problems that technology can solve. Today, cases of use of blockchain typically tend to focus on accessing data to a consortium, guaranteeing and withdrawing selective access to data and developing an immutable audit record of all transactions. Many healthcare organizations are exploring blockchain as a solution to allow data sharing in a verifiable and compliant manner to gain insights.
The technological platforms themselves are evolving significantly. Cloud computing providers are bringing their own opinion on blockchain. Looking a little further than the current advertising campaign, there is a clear shortage of technology professionals – from software architects to engineers – with blockchain experience.
Finally, a well-defined distribution strategy and robust implementation will be the keys to initial success. The first to adopt should identify appropriate use cases that get the most out of blockchain notions. This would not only allow them to justify the first investments, but could also put them in a position to define the best practices and proven reference models for blockchain in the health sector.
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