The healthcare industry is driven by data. As artificial intelligence, machine learning, and wearables begin to work their way into the healthcare ecosystem, it becomes imperative that the data being used is trustworthy. If the underlying data of medical reports being generated through machine learning and/or AI cannot be verified and shown to be authentic, the resulting insights could be considered unreliable or even worthless. This is something that many do not understand and will become more and more of a problem in the coming years.
The answer to this problem lies at the intersection of blockchain technology and data science. Jim Nasr, CEO of Acoer, for example, is exploring different ways to bring data authentication through blockchain into healthcare data. Two of Acoer’s products, HashLog and RightsHash, work with the idea of data verification through blockchain to simultaneously infuse blockchain with backend data. Utilizing Hedera Hashgraph as the underlying Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) protocol, HashLog “data stamps” transactions in real-time on Hedera to show public traceability and verification of transactions.
Network explorer sites, such as Hedera’s own network explorer or DragonGlass can be used to independently verify these transactions if needed. Blockchain is brought in with the use of a “Trust” function in reports. When the Trust button is deployed, the Hedera blockchain network verifies if any of the data in the reports has changed from the date it was last modified.
Blockchain technology also helps verify the order of transactions and gives a confidence score to the data to show there has been no manipulation. In healthcare, using the latest verified data is paramount.
It seems paradoxical to think that your private information could be safe on a public ledger, but the power of sophisticated cryptography makes it possible. The authenticity of that information can also be proven using the power of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). NFTs can basically be considered a unique, global reference to any digital asset, such (as commonly seen these days) a piece of art. What many may not realize though is that you can use the same technology to uniquely reference data--including health records or an individual’s rights and permissions. When combined with proper cryptography these references can be privacy-preserving, yet publicly show critical evidence of authenticity.
Sophisticated one-way, one-time encryption can be used to generate opaque references to underlying, protected health data. These are “pseudonymous” references--private information is not stored on the public ledger, however, the NFTs provide a means for publicly tracing and monitoring their associated transactions.
One of the business problems currently in development with RightsHash is to help individuals better manage their consent agreements; for instance, to use a mobile app or to participate in clinical research. This is an example of the emerging area of dynamic consent, allowing individuals to have discrete control over their consent agreements with organizations and for the consent itself to have different states (such as under review, enabled, revoke, renewed, custodied, etc.).
The power of RightsHash is the ability to associate these consent agreements with their individual owner across any number of different applications (through the use of the NFTs) and in real-time provide the ability to trace and monitor activities related to them.
We are just now breaking open the potential of NFTs. Multiple files can be associated with them, they can be updated, all transaction records are available on the public ledger, and most importantly, all of this can be done in real-time. The transparency afforded by the blockchain could bring trust back to our healthcare system since patients and providers are able to audit the information instantaneously.
The use of this technology is limitless in the healthcare industry and is particularly--as is the case with Acoer’s technologies-- designed to be economically viable and easy to adopt. For clinical drug trials, data is everything. If the underlying data can be manipulated, none of the studies are valid. When creating prediction analytics based on historical data, that data must be trustworthy, or the predictions generated would be pointless.
When tracking trends in Public Health, especially during the pandemic, it doesn’t matter how many data points you have if that data is inaccurate.
It’s possible we will eventually see our records move to the blockchain in the form of NFTs. This will be a game-changer because data will be trustworthy and owned by the patient. Patients will be the ones in charge of auditing health records for accuracy and will be able to hold providers to a higher standard in transparency. This will also allow for seamless collaboration between primary care providers and specialists, as well as emergency services, clinical study principal investigators, insurance companies, and beyond. This technology has the potential to completely disrupt the status quo.
The healthcare industry is trying to move into the future and must embrace blockchain technology to get there. Data has to be trustworthy. It is being used to determine our treatments, our Public Health policies, the safety of the medication, and beyond. Until our data can be verified and authenticated, the healthcare industry will continue to live in the dark ages.