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Kirill Timofeev, chief software project manager at the global technology consulting firm DataArt, explains how blockchain networks can empower patients.
Unfortunately, with current systems, it is often the responsibility of patients to share key documents between offices and physicians. This inefficiency costs the entire money of the system, requires considerable investment in terms of time and compromises the overall health services.
Distributed in the right way, personal health records (PHR), a collection of information about an individual's health, are powerful tools that help doctors manage a patient's health more effectively. While the information included varies, it usually covers the date of birth, allergies, medications, chronic health problems, family history, with more sophisticated varieties that also cover the measures that the patient must take to improve health, such as & # 39; exercise, stop smoking or lose weight. The wider adoption of the electronic sister of the PHRs, the Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR), would not only improve the assistance, but would also reduce costs.
Even more convincing is the potential of the EHR system to be a life saver. In the event of an emergency, it allows first responders to access critical, consolidated medical information on the spot.
The introduction of an effective EHR-based system, however, presents obstacles:
The cost
There is a significant initial technological cost in integrating health records that have never been designed to handle the complexities of multi-institutional interoperability data.
The position and the organization of the records
The medical records are isolated along the lines of "your data are your data and my data are my data". In addition, patients leave data scattered across organizations while life events take them from one provider to another, making it difficult to deliver high quality health services. This prevents citizens from taking control of their health needs and improving their overall health.
Time frame
It may take only a few seconds to send an email all over the world and reach a recipient, but it may take days or weeks to transfer the EHRs from one supplier to another. Things are slow and centralized. With many hospital systems, doctors can not even communicate effectively with other healthcare professionals – for lack of a useful system. A complaint presented in a system will have to go through many intermediaries before it reaches a doctor who has provided a service. Because of the hidden complexities in operational processes and the software systems that run them, test results never appear "magically" on the right doctor's desk.
A the solution emerges …
And if there were not only the EHRs distributed among the institutions? What would happen if there were a network that was immediately available to everyone, keeping sensitive and confidential information at the same time, a network in which every CCE could be stored, moved and exchanged almost instantly? Insert blockchain …
It is no secret that distributed technologies have been extensively studied in the last decade. For the first time in human history there is a solution that could provide a native trust between the stakeholders and the other participants. Blockchain, which has evolved from previous research, can create a mathematically and algorithmically proven network, based on collaboration, without powerful intermediaries, in which trust is a first-class citizen.
Blockchain as a technical infrastructure to support clinical data sharing could reduce the overall costs for patients accessing their medical records. Patients may have more control over who sees and what is most important is using their data, while healthcare providers may also provide better services based on more accurate data. It could catalyze the exchange of health information (HIE) at national and international level. Generalized accounting (DLT) technologies could also be used to help patients select a supplier and, where appropriate, make billing processes transparent. The merging of patient data not only improves health care for a patient, but represents a potential life-saving in an emergency.
Generalized accounting technologies are in the early days, but there are clear advantages in terms of data security and interoperability that could help reduce data problems in the health sector. It could solve the current disconnection between patients, health facilities and life sciences institutions: medical records, clinical studies, remote monitoring, billing and other sources could be efficiently presented and aggregated in a network of shared blockchains between suppliers and accessible to patients. Such systems may have access permissions and levels of control integrated into the product design from the very beginning.
What DLT technologies exist that could work?
There are various types of distributed register technologies that are already at an advanced stage of development. Very popular among developers is Hyperledger Fabric, a platform for distributed accounting solutions that offers high levels of confidentiality, resilience, flexibility and scalability. Designed as a basis for developing applications or solutions with a modular architecture, the Hyperledger Fabric allows components, such as consensus and membership services, to be plug-and-play. The channels supported in the Hyperledger Fabric allow data to go only to the parts that need to see it.
Another front-runner is R3 Corda, a technology for building interoperable blockchain networks that perform transactions in strict privacy. It is designed to record, manage and automate legal agreements between business partners. R3 Corda is designed by (and for) the largest financial institutions in the world and with applications in different sectors. Offers a unique response to the privacy and scalability challenges of decentralized applications.
The caveat
To make a blockchain solution effective, it is crucial to identify key stakeholders and counterparts who will come together to protect the network and prepare for a large-scale digital transformation program. It is necessary to maintain the momentum and commitment towards growing centers of excellence that would be available to intervene and simplify the integration between the partners. Blockchain technology could, however, be a turning point for patient empowerment.
If it is done, it must be done well. It would be useless to build a blockchain solution without a deep understanding of how these systems work, without making them compatible with existing platforms and protocols, and finally with a strategic digital transformation plan that will be supported at all major levels of the organization.
Author Jane Jacobs said: "We may have become so foiled as people that it no longer matter how things work, but what kind of outward impression is quick and easy to give." If so, c & # 39; it is little hope for our communities or probably for much else in our society. "I do not think it is so."
A blockchain is a great catalyst, though not the whole answer. To offer the best in patient care, healthcare professionals must work together to create an appropriate model of interoperability, in line with all existing regulations and standards. It's difficult, but it's possible.
