JULY 2018CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8in my viewSHAHRAM EBADOLLAHI, VP OF INNOVATION & CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER, IBM WATSON HEALTHmagine for a moment a healthcare system where patients control who sees their data. An individual at home recovering from a procedure might sign in to her medical account through a personalized dashboard on her phone, and with a couple of swipes give her physician consent to share her health record with her pharmacist. Or that same patient--determined to get a second opinion after a follow-up visit for imaging and labs--again might give permission to an off-site provider to go into her account and take a look at her results.In this imaginary world, there would be no need to travel from hospital A to hospital B for another appointment and another round of testing; and that pharmacist, wherever he might be, wouldn't need to be part of the same integrated network as his patient's referring physician. Medical information would live in "digital medical wallets"--and these wallets would be carried by the patients themselves.If it all sounds a little farfetched, that's because it is, at least for right now. But a few years down the road? Blockchain technology holds the promise to make it a realityBlockchain BasicsBlockchain is the cryptographic technology developed for Bitcoin to allow secure transactions without a central clearinghouse. With blockchain, buyers and sellers connect directly, and their exchanges are recorded in blocks of data on a digital "distributed ledger" visible to everyone in the network. Transactions go through when blocks are linked together using cryptographic validation. In Bitcoin's case, the blockchain is public (transactions are anonymous), so anyone can participate and add to the ledger. That's not quite the way blockchain will work in healthcare.For healthcare applications, it is anticipated each person's "wallet" would employ a blockchain where information would only be visible to those who had permission from that individual. Each person grants access to participants in their network--such as primary care physicians, specialists, and family members. Network participants would access data only after that participant's unique digital fingerprint had been validated. Interoperability between electronic health record systems would no longer be an issue because data would sit on the individual's personal data cloud.Blockchain: A Way to (Safely) Bring Down the Barriers to DataIShahram Ebadollahi
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