The Blockchain Interview with Jason Goldwater

Jason Goldwater, MA, MPA is senior director at National Quality Forum of Washington, DC.

[Mr. HIStalk] What healthcare problems can blockchain solve?

[Jason Goldwater] There are three, initially, that it has the potential to solve. First is access to data. The way that systems have been set up in hospitals or large integrated physician networks is that the data will either reside in a centralized server or now the trend is to reside it in a cloud. That’s fine and that certainly has been effective, but you’re talking about a large consolidation of data in a centralized location.

Jason GoldwaterBlockchain is very different because it is what is known as distributed ledger technology. Essentially translated, that means the data is not all residing in one place. The data is residing in various different locations. Every time a change to the data is made, that change is reflected across all the locations of which the data is stored. If there are going to be threats or hacks to data, it’s easier, to some extent, to hack into a centralized location to find a large amount of patient-generated data, whereas it’s more difficult to be able to get a large amount of patient data when it’s distributed across a large number of networks.

The second thing it potentially has the possibility of helping is in the area of interoperability. That’s where most of the attention has come from with respect to blockchain. A lot of individuals are looking at this as possibly a solution to the problems of interoperability over the years, Some have even gone so far as to label it as panacea of sorts. I don’t think it’s that, but I do think it has far-reaching potential to help with interoperability because it allows data to flow in whatever syntax and whatever structure to be stored across locations...