The Blockchain: Disrupting privacy in healthcare?

The healthcare industry is amongst the most hyped in terms of the potential blockchain impact it’s set to enjoy. According to a recent Black Book survey, one-third of hospital leaders reported that they now understood blockchain. With an increasing number of medical professionals and institutions migrating to (or wanting to migrate to) the blockchain, a natural question being asked is — will patient data stay safe?

The blockchain is a distributed ledger, shared amongst everyone connected to it. The very nature of the blockchain — that of being a set of public records — makes many medical professionals ask — how, and why would you want to put sensitive patient data on a system as transparent as this?

Well, for plenty of reasons:

• Blockchain technology will ideally eliminate multiple records. With the same records shared across multiple parties, you don’t need separate sets of data. This naturally reduces the chances of error when data is copied, and even reduces the chances of doctors and hospitals needing data they may not have. If it’s all on the blockchain, it’s all readily available.
• For healthcare data security, having multiple checkpoints instead of one single gateway for sensitive data can improve the process. Patients would also have more control in their data, and could be able to approve or deny any sharing or changes to their data.
• Billing Management: About 5–10% of healthcare bills are estimated to be fraudulent — either via excessive billing or billing for services that never occurred. Blockchain tech would improve logistical tracking and help log actual services better.

The Privacy Myth

(Source: BTCManager)

Concerns over data privacy on the blockchain seem to have little basis. This is because it is data privacy itself that the blockchain seeks to offer to the healthcare community.

With the blockchain, patients will be given more control and access over their own medical records. The patient then decides who they’d like to share this data with — and for how long. You could create a link between your data with your doctor during your visits, and turn this off when you’re done.

If the doctor had any new data or information to add, he would have to sign it with his own private key, recording in the blockchain that this change/data came from him. This naturally adds more accountability and reduces fraud in the entire chain. It’s a natural progression from current systems — where each entity has his/her own copy of your records, which may or may not be consistent. This copy of your records is permanent available to all these entities, and ripe for abuse and fraud.

In an interview with HITInfrastructure.com, Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf was betting big on the blockchain, saying that blockchain could “enable or better facilitate the transfer of medical records.”

Challenges

However, it is important for patients to understand the potential benefits of such a system, without which migration to the blockchain could prove to be difficult. Patients not wanting to be in control of their own records could be one of the biggest barriers to healthcare blockchain, argues VMware Senior Healthcare Strategist Chris Logan. “At the end of the day ownership is back on the patient to request that information or store the information as they see fit. From a compliance perspective including certain mandates healthcare providers have to conform to, this is where blockchain falls a little flat.”

Originally published at peerbuds.