What Could Blockchain Do for Healthcare?

Fragmented, insecure, and proprietary healthcare data could be completely redesigned on a blockchain-based system

Even the world’s best health systems are typically fragmented. “You have hospitals, community clinics, general practitioners, specialists, diagnostic clinics, and so on,” says Matt Jackson, who leads blockchain research at Canada’s Institute on Governance.

There are many reasons you might want to give someone access to your medical data. Maybe you just moved to a new city and want to give your new doctor access to your medical history, or perhaps you want to nominate a healthcare proxy in case of emergency or have your prescription sent to your pharmacy.

Some places, like the UK or Canada, have viable national systems for exchanging patient records, but those can be vulnerable to hackers.

In the United States, healthcare comes from a patchwork of private companies, which means the handling of patient data is even more fragmented. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, told MIT Technology Review last year that there are 26 different electronic medical records systems in his home city alone.