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

davidgerard.co.uk

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

#101

Post by tathougies »

tracker1 wrote: post #37
everfree wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cool.. what about the attached records, are they also accessible by all health companies? And if not, how do you know the ledger is really tied to the records, and if so, isn't this a breach waiting to happen?

Not an advocate for this tech, but the obvious answer is a hash so that someone could verify the data was added to the chain

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

#102

Post by WalterSear »

jakevn wrote: post #99
WalterSear wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Decentralized, anonymized reputation management. Imagine an ebay score that couldn't be owned by ebay, or any another company. * Decentralized digital Asset ownership verification. Again, imagine facebook without a facebook. Or imagine purchase a music or software token that you could use on any provider, and never expired. Sign up for a new streaming service and take all your songs/videos/games with you from the o…

None of which you have listed can be proven by blockchain as it has proofs for today. All would rely on external sources of truth which entirely live outside the verification of the blockchain. The blockchain in these cases would be an immutable chain of unverified facts.

* An anonymized reputation system is the equivalent of a transaction ledger. It needs no external source, as long as the involved actors agree to enter into evaluation of each other.

* Digital assets ownership ultimately only require external sources of truth for storage of whatever digital asset they intend to provide. I concur that this would be impossibly expensive to provide via an existing blockchain implementations, without an external point of truth, but still a technically possible feat.

* An entire company on the blockchain? Sure, it's not reasonable at the moment. It was just an attempt to paint a bigger picture. The fact that it's 'not yet reasonable' is why many people are starting to try. By the time it's 'reasonable', someone will have done it.

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

#103

Post by mycall »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #100
darawk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, let’s see: how does that benefit me in real, tangible terms? It allows you to store and transfer value in situations where you either cannot obtain, or do not trust your available banking relationships. You also have much, much lower fees for international remittance. > What risks does it have - for example, do users take on responsibility for fraud risk? It has two primary risks: - Transaction finality. This…

> much, much lower fees for international remittance This is patently false. My bank, Fidelity, lets me send domestic wires (which are virtually instantaneous) for free. (Fedwires actually cost most customers virtually nothing.) International wires aren't that much more expensive, with the majority of the cost for small transactions being antifraud. In that respect, every cryptocurrency is orders of magnitude more ex…

Is "wires" the technical term, as I can't find this at my bank.

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

#104

Post by AmericanChopper »

6nf wrote: post #91
AmericanChopper wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining simply refers to rewarding nodes that work to verify transactions. A blockchain can exist without distributed verification, and without mining.

Example?

Example of what? You’re quite clearly thinking about a mine-able crypto currency, of which blockchain tends to be an underlying data structure.

You want a blockchain without mining? You could set one up in a couple of minutes.

https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/

Do you want a real world example? It seems to be getting some use in supply chain management.

https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/industries/supply-chain

A blockchain is just a type of data structure. Cryptocurrencies use blockchains, but mining, trustless distributed consensus, fault tolerance, and all these other things are features of cryptocurrency implementations, not essential elements of blockchains.

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

#105

Post by AmericanChopper »

smt88 wrote: post #83
AmericanChopper wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But fault tolerance, consensus or mining are not a necessary part of blockchain either.

I put "true" in quotes because there are so many competing definitions for blockchain. I agree with other commenters that there is an original definition, but people rarely talk about blockchain these days without having the Bitcoin model in mind.

People tend to use the word blockchain as a near synonym for cryptocurrency, but even as the article in this thread shows, it’s not the only application for it. A blockchain is just a type of data structure, very similar to a linked list, with _some_ additional integrity features.

A lot of the pointless debate and highly opinionated grandstanding that takes place around blockchain is centred around misuse of the word. As far as data structures go, it’s a perfectly reasonable one, and has plenty of uses outside of cryptocurrency. Sure it’s a buzzword, but politicising the use of a particular data structure seems just as pointless as any other kind of dogmatic evangelism to me.

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

#106

Post by oralty »

mycall wrote: post #103
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> much, much lower fees for international remittance This is patently false. My bank, Fidelity, lets me send domestic wires (which are virtually instantaneous) for free. (Fedwires actually cost most customers virtually nothing.) International wires aren't that much more expensive, with the majority of the cost for small transactions being antifraud. In that respect, every cryptocurrency is orders of magnitude more ex…

Is "wires" the technical term, as I can't find this at my bank.

I read your comment history... something about TRS-80s. So probably older than 40 and American. I am truly amazed that someone could live that long with economic means to post here and not know what a bank wire is!

Just google it though. It's the most common way to send moderate sums of money in the world. And yes, pretty much any retail bank or credit union will offer wiring, probably for a fee.

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

#107

Post by 6nf »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #104
6nf wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example?

Example of what? You’re quite clearly thinking about a mine-able crypto currency, of which blockchain tends to be an underlying data structure. You want a blockchain without mining? You could set one up in a couple of minutes. https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/ Do you want a real world example? It seems to be getting some use in supply chain management. https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/industries/supply-chain A blockch…

Nobody is actually using 'blockchain' in production except to tick the buzzword box.

That IBM page is just a puff piece and they have no clients using anything like that.

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

#108

Post by pryelluw »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #28
pryelluw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ahh, I see... so more like speculative R&D, developing a technology to the point where it's saleable to a larger organisation. So there's no need for a customer problem to solve, it's just about building enough capability with the tech to become acqui-hirable, is that right?

To a point. I cant comment on regards to this being the goal of the company above.

We should consider the following:

A startup can have a product offering and also be the product itself.

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

#109

Post by AmericanChopper »

6nf wrote: post #107
AmericanChopper wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example of what? You’re quite clearly thinking about a mine-able crypto currency, of which blockchain tends to be an underlying data structure. You want a blockchain without mining? You could set one up in a couple of minutes. https://aws.amazon.com/blockchain/ Do you want a real world example? It seems to be getting some use in supply chain management. https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/industries/supply-chain A blockch…

Nobody is actually using 'blockchain' in production except to tick the buzzword box. That IBM page is just a puff piece and they have no clients using anything like that.

Volkswagen quite publicly use that very solution from IBM, and there’s numerous other examples of it being used in supply chain management, which absolutely isn’t the only useful application of blockchains.

It’s not even clear if you know what a blockchain is, and your comments on its usefulness are just as extreme and misinformed as the evangelists who say it can be used to solve any problem under the sun.

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

#110

Post by tastroder »

mhluongo wrote: post #72
IncRnd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Care to explain that hand-wavy downside?

The link you posted doesn't even aim for replacing DNS, by the abstract and landing page it seems to be an experimental setup to replace the root zone which has been signed for nearly 10 years now. DNSSEC is a thing.

Don't really see what's hand-wavy about your parent comment tbh, the link you posted doesn't seem to address common scenarios like 51% attacks or even why our current system is flawed. The only tangible thing I can find in there is that they don't like trusting verisign - which is fine but really a weird narrative to demonstrate why the world needs that particular implementation.

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