Patients accumulate vast quantities of healthcare data over the course of their lives. Those data are generally housed in centralized servers operated by various unrelated industry participants, including government regulators and payors, insurance carriers, hospitals, doctors, pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies.
Unfortunately, those repositories rely on disparate data practices. In addition, they are alluring targets for bad actors.
The industry has made a concerted effort to get ahead of the problem, healthcare data stolen from intermediary servers remains fairly commonplace. The consequence is that many healthcare organizations are in the crosshairs of patients, regulators and consumer protection advocates alike, and the costs of failure are mounting.
Fortuitously, as for many other issues facing the healthcare industry, blockchain technology offers a potential solution.