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Blockchain is one of those curiosities like the Cubism of Picasso: people admire it but do not know what to do with it. There has been a lot of buzz about how blockchain will alter data storage and transactions, but so far the hype has surpassed reality. Next year, however, it may be the year when the blockchain turns into a corner of health care.
This fall, PricewaterhouseCoopers published a report on health care blockchain and outlined six areas where it could have a profound impact: supply chain and inventory management; registration and management of supplier data; back office functions and payments; data management; manage risks and regulatory issues; and research and development.
Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani, writing last year in the Harvard Business Review (January-February 2017), highlighted the parallels between blockchain and TCP / IP (protocol of transmission control / internet protocol), which provided the basis for sending and digital processing for the Internet. "TCP / IP has unlocked the new economic value by drastically reducing the cost of connections," wrote the Harvard Business School professors. "Similarly, blockchain could drastically reduce the cost of transactions." Blockchain would be the digital transaction register – "a peer-to-peer network on the Internet", as Iansiti and Lakhani observed. TCP / IP took 30 years to develop fully; with blockchain, they said, the process will happen much faster. Bitcoin, for example, is based on blockchain technology.
Brett Blackman, CEO and founder of HealthSplash health technology company, describes blockchain as an ever-growing list of linked records, or blocks, linked to each other and protected by encryption. Write once and read only It is able to record transactions between two parties, verify them instantly, and then perform credit collection and redemption transactions – just as quickly. Each transaction is assigned a block that can not be changed unless the other blocks in the chain are altered. This, Blackman observes, would require collusion from the majority of the network. HealthSplash is in a pilot program with KanCare, the Kansas Medicaid program, to create a platform to improve efficiency in the verification of eligibility for participants through a unique digital platform.
For health care and the life sciences industry, blockchain represents "the perfect paradox" because data must be shared and guaranteed, Mark Treshock wrote in the Blockchain blog of IBM. Technology can provide faster access to a large amount of protected data, improve patient experience because people can get information so quickly and provide protection against counterfeit drugs, he said. However, a survey conducted by IBM in 2016 of over 200 health care executives found that North American health organizations were behind their counterparts in other countries in the adoption of blockchains. Blackman thinks, however, that 2019 may be the year the health care blockchain moves from talking to traction. It indicates the initiatives that Experian, the consumer credit reporting agency, and Cardona, the cryptocurrency provider, have undertaken to potentially provide health care platforms to accelerate payments for services. Both have become members of Hyperledger, an open source organization focused on blockchain technology. Other members of Hyperledger include the health services company Change Healthcare, Aetna, Eli Lilly and Hashed Health, which specializes in blockchain health care platforms.
