Blockchain in healthcare: Three important take-aways from a recent ACHE panel

CONTRIBUTOR

Chris Hayhurst

Essential Insights contributor, healthcare writer

Blockchain continues to be a hot topic as healthcare leaders grapple with how it can benefit their industry. With this in mind, the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) featured the topic at a recent regional meeting in a panel—sponsored by Cardinal Health—titled “Leveraging the Potential of Blockchain in Healthcare."

The panel, led by Robert Rajalingam, Cardinal Health's senior vice president of Strategic Accounts and Enterprise Marketing, featured three distinguished experts on blockchain technology and its applications across a variety of industries: Paul Chang, global blockchain industry leader at IBM Watson Health; Tim Mackey, PhD, associate professor in the Global Health Program at the University of California, San Diego; and Dan Vaught, director of infrastructure architecture at Cardinal Health.

In a packed room for a little over an hour, Chang, Mackey, Vaught, and Rajalingam covered everything from blockchain as the backbone of Bitcoin to the promise the technology has for healthcare. Here are three highlights from that discussion, which you can watch in full on YouTube below.

1. Blockchain is about trust and security.

We can think of blockchain as a technology platform that permits “multidirectional communication in a secure manner" between any organization and its customers and partners, Chang explained. At its core, Mackey added, blockchain is “an immutable distributed ledger that can better ensure the resilience, provenance, traceability, and management" of data.

In the cryptocurrency world of Bitcoin, the blockchain functions as a kind of database that tracks and confirms all transactions. When you buy or sell a Bitcoin, Vaught explained, you and everyone else on the Bitcoin network can see when the currency is traded through a record of the transaction that's added to the ledger.

In the healthcare environment, blockchain might be used for secure financial transactions, but it could also be leveraged to track medications, for example, or to verify product authenticity up and down the supply chain. Blockchain, Vaught explained, is about “building higher levels of transparency and trust across the [healthcare] ecosystem."

2. Blockchain use cases are “emerging."

Bitcoin aside, blockchain is still in its infancy. Still, Chang noted, a significant portion of the financial sector is either using the technology or planning to do so soon, and major retailers aren't far behind. Walmart, for instance, has partnered with IBM on a blockchain initiative that allows it to track food products from suppliers to its stores.

Additionally, American Express recently launched a blockchain pilot with online retailer Boxed. In healthcare, meanwhile, according to Mackey, “the use cases are still emerging." Estonia, for example, is testing the technology as a way to guarantee its healthcare system data integrity and to “mitigate internal threats" to that data.

In the United States, organizations are currently investigating how blockchain might be used in the clinical research space, and in allowing patients to carry their health-related data in personal (and shareable) digital “wallets."

3. Blockchain is coming to healthcare—and with it, there will be challenges and opportunities.

Before the blockchain discussion wrapped up, Rajalingam asked the audience for questions. One attendee asked how she could convince her hospital's digital security team that blockchain was actually safe; another wondered about the governance of a growing blockchain environment; and a third audience member, concerned about physician burnout, questioned whether blockchain might provide a way to reduce the paperwork doctors deal with when they're not providing care.

All three blockchain experts advised the first questioner that her Information Technology department should understand how blockchain can improve security. And if they have doubts, Chang pointed out, they could look to other sectors for reassurance. “Do you think these large financial institutions would be willing to put their financial data kind on a blockchain system if they didn't think it was secure?"

In addition, Chang noted, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration is running a pilot project testing how blockchain can secure information sharing across healthcare enterprises. “They know this is a long-term, potential game-changer, so they are testing this out, looking for holes, looking for ways people would hack in. And so far, what I've heard, is that it's been successful."

Addressing the second question—about blockchain governance in a world where multiple partners are participating in transactions—Chang described how Walmart and its partners formed a governance board consisting of representatives from each company. “They make the business rules, they make the procedural rules, and then IBM is just the administrator of the network," Chang said.

And finally, on the topic of physician burnout, Chang, Mackey, and Vaught all agreed that blockchain could potentially help, but that how it could do so remains to be seen. Farmers in Walmart's supply chain, Chang said, are using a mobile app to digitally record transactions and reduce their paperwork, and those same gains in efficiency could translate to healthcare. More likely, though, it will be other technologies, including machine learning, that reduce the charting that physicians have to do.

In the end, Rajalingam noted, the Cardinal Health ACHE panel “just scratched the surface" of blockchain's potential impact on healthcare. As the technology moves forward, there will be other discussions, he said—and more answers for industry leaders as well.

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