Health data as a cryptocurrency

This month it was announced the creation of the first company using blockchain to provide a mobile solution for exchanging medical records, Wait… Blockchain?

Isn’t that related to cryptocurrencies? Bitcoin and the sort? Traded in Wall Street?

Well, Blockchain is an enabler actually. It is a distributed database system (stores data on many nodes at the same time across the world) on which data is guaranteed to be immutable (nobody can change what has been written to it, the system ensures it using rather complex cryptographic techniques) and it is quite hard to get authorisation to write on it.

Now imagine a global system where you, the patient, own your medical records, and only you grant and revoke access to them. It is your data.

If you change doctors, you revoke access to the former one and grant access to the new one.

Emergency services would have a golden key to access records of everyone. It will facilitate things enormously to health professionals who normally struggle to find out who you are medically speaking and what your medical situation is.

If you undergo a blood test -or any other test- the laboratory stores the results in your repository (you would grant a one-off write access to it).

If an X-Ray is taken when in hospital, image and doctor’s diagnostic is stored along with the rest of your data.

If you use a wearable device that tracks your heart rate or blood pressure, you can allow it to store the data continuously in your “health repository” enriching your dataset.

If you take any medication you can keep track of the treatment, dose and length.

And then you can sell or donate your anonymized health data for research…

Opportunities are endless.

What is undeniable is that technology is focussing nowadays in human health more than ever before, and we at Monteloeder are part of it.

Favio Varela

IT Manager