Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

davidgerard.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 154 posts

Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

#51

Post by acdha »

DennisP wrote: post #50
chris_wot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could tell me even one application of this technology outside of cryptocurrency, I'd genuinely be interested.

Do you mean outside of any involvement with currency, or just outside of simple transfers of currency? Because a lot of things are applications of programmable money, like derivatives, exchanges, and gambling. Beyond that, some games are using public blockchains to track ownership of game items.

None of which seem to intrinsically need a blockchain or be more competitive for using one. All of the real volume in those activity classes not using blockchains would need some explanation.

Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

#52

Post by drcode »

fishB wrote: post #21
drcode wrote: post #17

As 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)

What blockchain technology are you going with? I find the private blockchain technologies (Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth) superior for these types of applications especially since Fabric implemented private data.

Why not just store the data privately in a traditional database? A blockchain needs to be public to offer significant benefits compared to databases.

Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

#53

Post by dredmorbius »

encloser wrote: post #39
tracker1 wrote: post #36

I cringe every single time someone suggests blockchain in our space. Either it's easier with other tech (even public/private key tech doesn't require blockchain), or open to potential leaks/abuse in the future (tracking how everyone voted). There are a lot of use cases, most even, where it's not a great fit, and there are other, better, approaches. Disclosure, I work for an election services company...

I like to provide people the NIST Blockchain Overview pdf. Particularly the decision flowchart. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2018/NIST.IR.8202.pdf

P. 42 for the chart.

(But of course.)

Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

#54

Post by acdha »

Uptrenda wrote: post #15

I 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 th…

> 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.

We’ve been hearing this for a decade – it’ll change the world, if you don’t agree it’s because you don’t understand it well enough – and yet we don’t have a single example of it being competitive, much less compelling.

One of the common comparisons is the internet or, more specifically the web, but those really just highlight how inappropriate those comparisons are. In both cases, within a few years there were multiple examples of real problems being solved and businesses seeing profits from adoption (not just speculation) — and that despite far greater barriers to adoption.

Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

#56

Post by acdha »

pryelluw wrote: post #20
marcus_holmes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is that not done at a tiny fraction of the cost using PKI? None of the parties are secret and there’s a clear line of ownership for every bit of information. What does a blockchain add other than scaling challenges and the opportunity to create an irrecoverable HIPAA violation?

Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

#57

Post by IncRnd »

hschoenburg wrote: post #47
chris_wot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could tell me even one application of this technology outside of cryptocurrency, I'd genuinely be interested.

DNS -> https://handshake.org

Have you considered the downside of an attack against such a DNS system? That is a severe drawback to handshake that limits trust in such a system. This exemplifies the argument you are trying to refute, that using a blockchain as a solution is often poor design.

Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

#58

Post by darawk »

acdha wrote: post #54
Uptrenda wrote: post #15

I 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 th…

> 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. We’ve been hearing this for a decade – it’ll change the world, if you don’t agree it’s because you don’t understand it well enough – and yet we don’t have a single example of it being competitive, much less compelling. One of the common comparisons is…

You think that dis-intermediating banks for electronic funds transfer is not an application?

Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

#59

Post by 4ntonius8lock »

acdha wrote: post #51
DennisP wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean outside of any involvement with currency, or just outside of simple transfers of currency? Because a lot of things are applications of programmable money, like derivatives, exchanges, and gambling. Beyond that, some games are using public blockchains to track ownership of game items.

None of which seem to intrinsically need a blockchain or be more competitive for using one. All of the real volume in those activity classes not using blockchains would need some explanation.

I see it being used in public registry points.

For example, property records. Right now there are considerable checks and balances needed to ensure there aren't funny things going on with the books when they are locked away at night.

This isn't as pressing an issue in the US, but it is a massive problem worldwide. Central governments in some countries want to be able to track property without the record keepers stealing it.

I don't think we'll see this widespread for the next 20-30 years. But imagine when existing power structures have absorbed this tech and they can then sell it - like VISA selling a block chain property registry to countries where the money is auto transferred in local currency from one end user to another while communicating to the countries central bank... maybe with tie in to bio metrics for ID and transaction verification and automatic tax payments.

Hardly a disruption from existing nation state and corporate power structures, but definitively a disruption in the possibilities of what can be offered.

Re: Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea

#60

Post by perl4ever »

80x25 wrote: post #34
godzillabrennus wrote: post #4

I recently worked on a yellow paper that outlines a data exchange with no centralized authority that puts ownership and encryption responsibility of that data back onto the users of the network. It's a data exchange not a blockchain because all data should be mutable and nullifiable. Blockchain is the wrong technology for so many things that it's been hyped for.

Perhaps your comment was meant to be tongue in cheek, but it sounds like this data exchange is a replacement for the World Wide Web? It's not IPFS is it?

I had to look up IPFS, because I confused it with IPoAC.
Post reply on HN