Why wearables, health records and clinical trials need a blockchain injection
The opportunity exists in healthcare to hand over control of medical records to patients who can choose not only what info providers can see but what personal data gets added to records via wearables, genomics and even lifestyle choices.
And once patients begin accumulating more data about themselves in personal health records (PHRs), they can opt to anonymize that information and sell it to researchers, vastly expanding the pool of information available for clinical studies.
Because no data is as sensitive as a medical record, being able to assure its security and immutability through blockchain encryption represents a unique opportunity to “repatriate” and “monetize” that record for the patient, according to Dr. Eric Hoskins, chair of Canada’s Federal Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare.
Hoskins moderated a panel on blockchain and the future of healthcare last week at the Blockchain Global Revolution Conference here.
Electronic health records (EHRs) were supposed to create a longitudinal ledger – ensuring healthcare events are tracked in their correct chronological order and span a patient’s continuum of diagnosis and treatment. But EHRs, which were mandated by the U.S. and other governments, were based on proprietary software from a myriad of vendors – meaning they weren’t good at sharing information between providers and weren’t always adept at ingesting data from new sources.
In essense, that means copious amounts of healthcare data is now being collected and recorded, but as yet isn’t being used, studied and shared broadly. That, too, is an area where blockchain could make a difference in the years ahead.
There is already a multi-billion dollar industry that collects patient information, strips it of basic personal identifiers such as name, address and Social Security Number, and then sells it off to researchers, drug developers, marketers and others. Medical informatics companies such as Iqvia (IMS Health), Optum, and Symphony Health reap the profits of selling the healthcare data while the people from whom it’s collected have no control over how it’s used. Nor do they get any compensation for it.
Several new start-ups are developing avenues for patients to securely sell their anonymized data to researchers and others, including Hu-manity.co, which last year partnered with IBM to develop a healthcare data platform.
Rhea Mehta, CEO of Bowhead Health, a blockchain technology company that sells a health and wellness tracker, said her company is using Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts that self-execute without the need of a third party to ever touch patient data in order to distribute it.
“Patients can become owners of data and, with their consent, share data with practitioners and allow them to sell anonymous data to buyers,” said Mehta, who took part in the blockchain-and-healthcare panel.
By enabling patients to add their own details around lifestyle – what they eat, how much they exercise and sleep, a personal health record would offer physicians greater personal insights for more targeted clinical decision making.
