Use Case: How Blockchain Would Protect The Public Health From Theranos

The controversy surrounding Clinical Laboratory vendor Theranos demonstrates the need for transparency in laboratory testing. One version of the Blockchain would create identification and maintenance tracking for all blood, urine, other bodily fluids, and for cellular and genetic analyzers used by clinical and genomic laboratories. The July 31, 2016, American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), Convention in Philadelphia brought together over 20,000 laboratory professionals from around the world. The Laboratory Analyzer “flavor” of the Clinical Blockchain would allow for the tracking of all Point of Care Technologies that monitor blood, DNA, and other medically significant sensor / analyzer information. Major medical device companies such as Abbott, Ortho, Sysmex, Roche, Streck, Binding Site, Med Test, Hologic, Becton Dickinson, Siemens, and others would benefit from participating in a Clinical Blockchain. If Theranos, had been involved in providing end to end transparency (from analyzer to lab testt report), patients, doctors, regulators, and the laboratory industry would have discovered Theranos was not using its in-house “Edison” analyzers to perform routine clinical laboratory tests. Theranos was able to cover-up the truth for over 2 years resulting in potential harm to patients, and the closing of its California laboratory.

In addition to providing transparency for test results reporting, the Laboratory Analyzer Clinical Blockchain will include reporting of maintenance schedules for individual devices, certification of technicians, reference ranges, and even reagents. Elements of the analyzer Clinical Blockchain could be integrated into other Clinical Blockchains, or provide interoperability with other “flavors” via a clinical Blockchain 2-way peg that is described below.

Clinical Reference Laboratories such as Quest, LabCorp, RML, ARUP, Mayo Medical Laboratories, Bio-Reference Laboratories, 23 And Me, Alere, and others could participate in the Laboratory Analyzer Clinical Blockchain. The Clinical Blockchain could also integrate the CDC, and the Public Health Laboratories involved in responses to Ebola, Zika, Salmonella, and bioterrorism.

In addition to tracking clinical laboratory and analyzer information, blockchains will be utilized to aggregate all medication information for a given patient including Express Scripts, CVS Health (formerly CVS Caremark) and United Health/OptumRx, Walgreens and other retail pharmacies. In short, any item with an NDC Code will be tracked on the Clinical Blockchain.

@ebukstel