What the Former PM of Estonia Taught Me About Blockchain and Healthcare

When I met the former Prime Minister of Estonia, Taavi Rõivas, last year at Mindvalley’s Hall of Awesomeness, he was telling the audience a story of how the Estonian government worked with cutting edge technology like the blockchain. One example he gave was in their healthcare sector, especially in the area of the management and access of medical records — past surgeries, current and past medications, allergies. Someone asked how could he be so sure that wrongful parties wouldn’t access the data for, well, the wrong reasons.

Just like any good politician, he replied with an example*, a nice reframe if I might add.

“When you go to the hospital, and your doctor asked for your file. He will have to ask the nurses to retrieve it for him. The nurses, busy as they are, had to answer a phone call on the way to the doctor’s room, and left your docket on the counter. The cleaning lady and janitor were tidying up the area, and had to move your folder around. In that short time, the nurse, the cleaning lady and the janitor, and God knows who else around the vicinity could have taken a peek at your private information. So how is that secure?”

*Reworded from memory, so don’t quote him on my account.

The example was a valid one. I mean, how often do we not take a glance at things we were not supposed to, in the name of curiosity?

He went on to explain that with the blockchain, and having his medical records on it, simply meant tighter security. Only doctors will have access to the information, and every login is tracked as well, leaving digital footprints and time stamps. Another example he added was, should there be an emergency, and he had lost consciousness and needed immediate care, his doctors would know the exact details of his medical history, enough to carry out procedures that would otherwise require a family member to be around. And you have to admit, sometimes even as family members, we are not 100% sure of their medical conditions, which could lead to misdiagnosing and wrong treatments.

That talk spurred me to look at technology and healthcare a lot differently, and personally too. You see, during my mom’s cancer treatment, she had to carry her medical records everywhere she went, with every different doctor that she saw. I recalled making a passing remark that despite how much we have advanced technologically, we were still very archaic in something as important as healthcare.

SO IS BLOCKCHAIN THE ANSWER?

Many would tell you that we are still at the infant stages of this amazing technology, but we cannot deny the potential it brings to almost every sector — legal, real estate, e-commerce, finance are just too name a few. And of course, the healthcare sector will be one that could stand to benefit the most from the immutable, highly secured system.

For the layman who’s still bumped by what blockchain is, a simple way to explain is to imagine a Dropbox folder that has multiple copies across different locations, but the info within the folder are synced around the clock. The folder doesn’t just reside at one location, making it very reliable because if ever one server (or node) breaks down, there are still multiple servers around with your data. And since the same copies of your folder are stored across multiple locations, hacking it is close to impossible because the hacker will need to penetrate all servers at the same time. Best part is, only you have full access to the information stored within your folder, and you have the choice to grant someone specific privileges to them, putting the responsibility of the data back in your hands.

Ok, so that is a simplistic way of explaining the blockchain, but if you can picture that example of the Dropbox folder, you can pretty much relate to how blockchain functions.

Now, imagine your medical records are stored in that “cloud” folder, and your doctors, hospital administrators, and pharmacists are the only ones granted access by you to alter the records. Plus, every time they do that, their signatures would be on it, and the records cannot be changed, adding a layer of accountability to the data. With smart contracts, you can even set certain conditions where when it’s met, an action will consequentially take place. Think of how your insurance and medical policies can be linked this way, saying you tons of paperwork, phone calls and unnecessary authorizations.

Again, this is a very layman’s view of how the blockchain can level up the healthcare industry, solving age-old problems. I believe the more we can understand the fundamentals of how anything works, we can move pass the understanding and towards proper application.

HELLO BIG DATA

According to this paper by Oxford Academic, Google Trends could detect regional outbreaks of influenza 7–10 days before the conventional surveillance systems used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And that was just based on the trends of searches.

Imagine if they had access to our medical records (as an overview of course, and not zoning down to specific individuals, researchers would have more data to quickly diagnose a patients’ condition, and even chart potential outbreaks, totally realizing the adage of “prevention is better than cure”.

If every hospital and clinic is on the blockchain, and with the amount of data that the right, authorized parties have access to, for once medical professionals can literally “talk to each other”, collaborating for mutual benefits with the speed and security of technology. No more isolated silos where critical information are contained. No more isolated cases where patients are misdiagnosed due to the lack of data. It’s like having a vast library of medical knowledge at the fingertips, enough to extrapolate data to perhaps one day, prolong humanity’s lifespan.

IS THIS JUST A SCENE OUT OF A SCI-FI MOVIE?

Like I mentioned earlier, blockchain and it’s potential is still in its early stages, and the hypes and scams around cryptocurrency honestly are only deviating our attention from the practical applications. Blockchain will affect us, bridging the Trust Gap just like how the Internet did in bridging the Distance Gap.

And many forward-thinking companies are already pooling resources — the brightest minds on programming with the brilliant business acumens of visionary entrepreneurs — to leverage on infusing blockchain into their solutions. In the digital ID space, there’s Xenchain, with a core team of years of experience in the personal identification and remittance sector. As a matter of fact, while other ICOs are geared to build the tech their whitepapers promises, Xenchain already has the existing technology used by their clients. Their fundraising is to further expand their technology across different verticals, enhancing the functionality of the app in the process.

Xenchain is poised to realise the blockchain healthcare revolution we had been talking about since the start of this article, and if you want to participate in their existing business, take a look at their whitepaper at xenchain.io, or even register your interest for their ICO.