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It is difficult to have a conversation about technological innovations in 2018 without stumbling into the realm of blockchain. Since it first appeared on most people's radars – thanks to the always turbulent bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies: financial organizations, major retailers and even governments have investigated whether or not trend technology has something to offer.
As a result, it is not surprising that an impressive number of startups and entrepreneurs have put their blockchain tools on show to improve consumer health by facilitating research, securely transferring health data and resolving other pressing health challenges.
A blockchain primer
But the first thing is the first: what is blockchain?
Generally speaking, it is a peer-to-peer series of stuck digital data stores (the blocks) that are linked together (the chain) and are checked constantly by mistake. Changes to this chain are marked by timestamp and can only be performed with the appropriate cryptographic key, with any unauthorized changes to a detected block and overwritten by the rest of the chain.
The result is an immutable and distributed ledger – an ideal structure for cryptocurrency registries trying to distance themselves from any type of central database. But beyond the concept of exchanging coins online or digital kittens, its structure also promises key benefits for some actors in the health sector.
"What blocks the blockchain is sharing information and automating processes across corporate boundaries, where these processes have a high cost of reconciling inconsistent data and it's important for health care largely because we have so many islands of information in the healthcare world, "Mike Jacobs, a distinguished senior engineer with Optum Health and the company's blockchain spokesperson, told MobiHealthNews. "One example is that a supplier can file a claim to a payer, and a payer has information at hand that needs to be compared to the claim, and if there is a significant difference such requests can be dismissed. that a great deal of reconciliation between the two organizations is necessary. "
Blockchain in the boot ecosystem
The Optum application processing approach is not the only application we've seen, though. And while the main health professionals have constantly announced the pilots management of clinical trials, fraud prevention, revenue cycle management, supply chain monitoring and other cases of use in the last two years, the startup space has seen a similar explosion of activity while entrepreneurs try to hit while the iron is hot.
For some of these hopes, this means collect the well-established block-block-cryptocurrency concept. Sweatcoinfor example, it encourages users to record further daily passages by offering their digital currency supported by blockchain, which can be redeemed for various assets. Others like it Hayver is Sobercoin have a similar pattern for users who regularly check-in in an & # 39; app to report that they are drug-free.
"The cryptocurrency has arrived and I have always wanted to encourage people to use the app to make it useful for them," said Harold Jonas, founder and CEO of Sobercoin, at MobiHealthNews at the start of this year. . "Now we can find a way to pay them or incentivize them to use the app or check-in indicating that they are without drugs and therefore are rewarded and incentivized for that methodology".
Digital coins are not only used to promote healthy behavior; they also serve as compensation for exchanges of health data. To take Nebula Genomics, start of genome sequencing: together with paying users a digital currency to sequester and sell their data to third parties, the company then uses blockchain to store and protect test results. This data is encrypted with multiple keys held by different parties to allow access, if the consumer allows it.
"For example, you can choose to be informed whenever a researcher requests access to your data, and you can reject any such request," the company wrote on its website. "To protect the data you choose to share, we will make sure that your data is rendered anonymous and we will also limit the access of researchers to it by implementing distributed calculation and preserving privacy".
A number of startups like doc.ai is Embleema they are also taking advantage of the opportunity to help consumers share their health data with life science researchers, but they are combining them with a personal health record platform.
"Our mission is to overthrow the bottle and put the patients first, restoring their sovereignty over the data," said Robert Chu, CEO and founder of Embleema, in a statement at the start of this year. . "Blockchain eliminates the need for third parties to mediate data sharing, while providing the most accurate data possible for precision medicine, which is the best way to ensure that individual patient data is used to their advantage."
Adjacent to these is OncoPower. Built specifically for cancer patients, the blockchain-based personal health platform helps users track and share their medical data through various care providers, interact with a community of cancer survivors and – of course – receive cryptocurrency incentives for treatment adherence.
However, not all block-block eye-up eyeings are necessarily focused on the consumer. For some time, the startup API for health care PokitDok has worked on its network of blockchain transactions (DokChain) for a multitude of use cases, including EHR and identity verification, automatic regulation, smart contracts and more. Akiri, spinout of AMA's Health2047 innovation company, is building a private network as a service for healthcare organizations where the blockchain is used to allow modifications by multiple authorized parties.
And with more startups still lining up to design and sell their blockchain health solutions to needy healthcare organizations, space does not risk slowing down.
"The promise of this is leading to hundreds of startup companies jumping on this attempt to create this blockchain-enabled application," Roger Smith, head of technology at the Florida Hospital Nicholson Center, said at the beginning of this year at the Digital Healthcare Innovations Congress in Boston. "Some of these will be very successful, and many of them will not hear from them anymore".
