Tamara StClaire, Digital Health Advisor at BaseHealth | Industry Era

Tamara StClaire, Digital Health Advisor,
BaseHealth

If you follow technology in healthcare, you have likely heard of blockchain. But even if you are aware of the platform, it may not have truly hit your radar as possibly having near term impact. In fact Gartner puts blockchain at the peak of inflated expectations – speculating it will be another 5 to 10 years before it reaches mainstream adoption. However, there are a number of stakeholders that are working to defy Gartner’s predictions by attempting to put blockchain into commercial use within the year.For those of you new to blockchain or wanting an update, blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger of online exchanges. It creates a log of events that are unchangeable – preserving data integrity and security throughout the transaction. Blockchain relies on established cryptographic techniques to allow each participant in a network to interact without preexisting trust between the parties. It emerged in 2009 as the foundational trading platform for bitcoin. (Here’s a video from a recent talk at Google explaining blockchain further.)

One possible reason that some parts of the healthcare industry are ignoring the blockchain clamor is that there’s lots of talk about the platform and perhaps not enough talk about the problems it can solve. Most experts agree the following healthcare challenges can be addressed via blockchain:

•Master Patient Identifier – the very nature of blockchain incorporates the equivalent of an MPI. It uses private and public identifiers to create a singular, secure method for ensuring and protecting a patient’s digital identity.•Autonomous Automatic Adjudication – using what is sometimes described as the killer app of the blockchain, smart contracts will have the necessary logic embedded in them to automate the provider, health plan and member agreements so that claims can be processed automatically and in real time

•Interoperability – data stored on the blockchain could be universally available to specific individuals or organizations. It offers a means to interoperate since all users of a network can access that network and all pieces of information are both verified and show the history of transactions.