IBM Watson Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are partnering to investigate how blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) can benefit the healthcare field. This follows up on a partnership the company reached with the US Food and Drug Administration earlier this year aimed at defining a secure, efficient and scalable exchange of health data using blockchain technology. The two entities are exploring the exchange of owner mediated data from several sources, including electronic medical records, clinical trials, genomic data, and health data from mobile devices, wearables, and the “Internet of Things.”
“Transformative healthcare solutions are possible when healthcare researchers and providers have access to a 360-degree view of patient data,” the company said. Patients today don’t have much access to their health data and are not able to easily share with researchers or providers. “Giving patients the opportunity to share their data securely, for research purposes or across their healthcare providers, creates opportunities for major advancements in healthcare,” IBM added. “Blockchain technology, which enables organizations to work together with more trust, is designed to help make this a reality.”
Blockchain technology establishes accountability and transparency in the data exchange process by keeping an audit trail of all transactions on an unalterable distributed ledger. “In the past, large-scale sharing of health data has been limited by concerns of data security and breaches of patient privacy during the data exchange process.”
IBM and the FDA are investigating how a blockchain framework can provide benefits to public health by supporting important use cases for information exchange across a wide variety of data types. “New insights combining data across the healthcare ecosystem can potentially lead to new biomedical discoveries,” said the company. “Patient data from wearables and connected devices, for example, can help doctors and caregivers better manage population health.”