Gosh I love David Gerard....
Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
11–20 of 154 posts
Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
#12Hard not to imagine a pompous Brit spraying saliva everywhere while reading this.
To the content - there is only one way to place data on the cloud that is impervious to all global state, corporate and nefarious actors. That is with a robust blockchain. Whether or not you think that is useful in medical records is another story.
I've been a medical doctor for 10 years and think that it is.
Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would it actually solve a problem that couldn't be solved more conveniently with current standards?
It would provide an auditable, tamper-proof database with an immutable history, accessible by all health companies and not controlled by any one health company.
I believe there were technologies before blockchain that enabled that.
Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
#14Hard not to imagine a pompous Brit spraying saliva everywhere while reading this. To the content - there is only one way to place data on the cloud that is impervious to all global state, corporate and nefarious actors. That is with a robust blockchain. Whether or not you think that is useful in medical records is another story. I've been a medical doctor for 10 years and think that it is.
> nefarious actors
hey, it's me, your blockchain developer
Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
#15I feel its become very fashionable to dismiss the simpler applications of the tech because of how unrealistically its been applied. It's so easy to do too. Look at the insane valuations, the fraud, and hype cooked up by marketers, and the whole thing looks very stupid. But its a mistake to let this get in the way of critical thinking.
There is a reason why the topic is brought up so often and its because among all that garbage there is genuine potential. It requires education, and R & D to unlock most of it. But at some point we'll have straight-forward tools that can be applied to solve a variety of common problems.
I predict the end result won't look any where near as exciting as it is today. It's likely going to end up being a flexible and boring set of auditing tools. But that's still going to improve the transparency and efficiency of many organizations. And give how archaic some of the processes around businesses are today -- those changes are still going to look revolutionary in their context.
Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would it actually solve a problem that couldn't be solved more conveniently with current standards?
It would provide an auditable, tamper-proof database with an immutable history, accessible by all health companies and not controlled by any one health company.
Since the actual data in this scenario would still be hosted by the individual companies, what guarantee is there that they’d correctly log all access into this shared ledger?
Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
#17As someone who is a CEO of a medical blockchain startup which is trying to find actual meaningful use cases, I agree 100% with the conclusions of this post.
(finding actual convincing use cases in the medical space for this tech is hard)
Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
#18To be generous to those proposing blockchain for health records I think their intent to suggest that it be used for the access/authentication layer of a more conventional secure database, but that's just a guess.
I've found this diagram to be extremely helpful for thinking about why/why not to use blockchain: https://i.redd.it/uu0qg8t28tq11.png (p.42 https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2018/NIST.IR.8202.pdf)
One problem is blockchain is good for identity but not so much access/authentication.
Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
#19As someone who is a CEO of a medical blockchain startup which is trying to find actual meaningful use cases, I agree 100% with the conclusions of this post. (finding actual convincing use cases in the medical space for this tech is hard)
so...why are you still the CEO of a medical blockchain startup? Surely you escorted yourself off the premises by now? ;)
But seriously, isn't this putting the cart before the horse? The usual order is "find a problem, build a solution", not "find a technology, build a solution, work out who has a problem it can solve". How's that working out for you?
Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
#20As someone who is a CEO of a medical blockchain startup which is trying to find actual meaningful use cases, I agree 100% with the conclusions of this post. (finding actual convincing use cases in the medical space for this tech is hard)
so...why are you still the CEO of a medical blockchain startup? Surely you escorted yourself off the premises by now? ;) But seriously, isn't this putting the cart before the horse? The usual order is "find a problem, build a solution", not "find a technology, build a solution, work out who has a problem it can solve". How's that working out for you?
There might be potential uses for distributed ledgers in an industry that is required by law to share your care history. This specific company not having arrived at a concrete product does not negate the potential upside. All it takes for them to do is develop a technology that can be of interest to an industry giant and become acquired. Im not saying this is the case here, but it is a real option.