May 8, 2018 | Blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, has a surprising degree of relevance for healthcare. It has already found real-world applications (and potential ROI) in reducing the time it takes to credential physicians and underpins an emerging decentralized marketplace for the exchange of digital services and currency. It is also driving collaboration and creative problem-solving around some of the industry’s most vexing cost and quality problems, and ongoing shift toward more patient-centered, outcomes-oriented care. In this series of stories, Clinical Informatics News writer Deborah Borfitz looks into emerging use cases for blockchain in health care and clinical trials, and speaks with some of the companies breaking new ground. --AP

Real-World Blockchain Applications In Healthcare

As blockchain visionaries see it, value chains of the future will have an entirely new infrastructure and change the nature of transactions involving “assets”—ranging from claims funneling into a revenue cycle to patients moving through an episode of care—by removing the need for an intermediary that sets the rules and extracts a fee.

Blockchain-Secured, Patient-Controlled Health Records

Physicians are particularly enthusiastic about blockchain’s potential to restore their clinical autonomy and relationship with patients by cutting out unnecessary middlemen. In the case of electronic health records (EHRs), the disintermediated parties would include hospitals and EHR vendors by shifting ownership to individual patients. It is arguably the most valuable use case for blockchain, and certainly the most popular.

Sequences For Sale: Blockchain In The Genomics Market

While some groups are working to bring blockchain to clinical care, George Church plans to use the technology for carrier-status matchmaking.