Blockchain

See the following -

Halamka Evaluates Blockchain for Health Information Exchange

Yesterday, I read a New York Times article about a possible successor to Bitcoin called Ethereum, which provides a distributed database (no central repository) for the purpose of tracking financial transactions. I immediately thought of the challenge we have turning silos of medical information into a linked, complete, accurate, secure,  lifetime medical record. Might blockchain technology be useful in healthcare?   I posted the question to my colleagues, Arien Malec (VP, Data Platform and Acquisition Tools at RelayHealth and the new Chair of the HIT Standards Committee) and David McCallie (SVP of Medical Informatics at Cerner).

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Halamka on the ONC Blockchain Challenge

Early this year, I posted a collaborative discussion about the potential applications of Blockchain for healthcare. Ariel Ekblaw from the MIT Media Lab collaborated with Beth Israel Medical Center (BIDMC) to actually implement Blockchain medication reconciliation with deidentified patient data. ONC selected it as a winner of the Blockchain Challenge. The idea is simple. Blockchain was invented to handle financial transactions such as deposits and withdrawls. Medication management is very similar to a bank account. Think of your body as a vault.

Halamka Sets Healthcare Innovation Priorities for 2017

As we begin 2017, what should be the focus of our work over the next year?... Regardless of the policies, repeals, and delays of the Trump administration, we’ll still need to optimize usability and support the four goals of value-based purchasing - quality measurement, total medical expense management, practice process improvement and technology adoption. BIDMC has already created a prototype of groupware documentation and we should complete our next generation inpatient documentation solution by mid 2017. Part of that work incorporates open source secure texting as part of the medical record. We’re also piloting Google’s G-suite so that our stakeholders can store/share, collaborate, and communicate on any device from anywhere using only a browser...

Halamka's Advice to the Trump Administration

As I've listened to the confirmation hearings for cabinet nominees, I’ve realized that no one with healthcare IT expertise has yet been identified by the transition team. I continue to ask all my colleagues about any contact they’ve had with anyone advising the new administration - so far, no one has been asked anything by anyone related to healthcare IT. At this early time in the administration, it’s important to offer advice as to the priorities ahead for the next few years. What would I recommend to the new administration?

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Halamka's Reflections on US Health IT Policy Trajectory

I’m in China this week, meeting with government, academia, and industry leaders in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai,  and Suzhou. The twelve hour time difference means that I can work a day in China, followed by a day in Boston. For the next 7 days, I’ll truly be living on both sides of the planet. I recently delivered this policy update about the key developments in healthcare IT policy and sentiment over the past 90 days. I’ve not written a specific summary of the recently released Quality Patient Program proposed rule which provides the detailed regulatory guidance for implementation of MACRA/MIPS, but here’s the excellent 26 page synopsis created by CMS which provides an overview of the 1058 page rule...

Health Care in a Post-Privacy World

Someone knows you are reading this. They know what device you are using.  They know if you make it all the way to the end (which I hope you do!).  They may be watching you read it, and listening to you.  They know exactly where you are right now, and where you've been. As FBI Director James Comey recently proclaimed, "there is no thing as absolute privacy in America." Director Comey was speaking about legal snooping, authorized by the courts and carried out by law enforcement agencies, but, in many ways, that may be the least of our privacy concerns...

Health Care Should Be Five By Five

People love to talk about "moonshots" in health (e.g., Joe Biden, GE).  I'm not exactly sure why that is a good goal.  The actual moonshot took thousands of people many years and tens of billions, all to send a few people far away for a short period and never again.  It may or may not have produced otherwise useful technological advances (Tang, anyone?).  Sounds a lot like health care now, actually. I suggest a different goal: let's make health care "Five by Five." Five by five is a communications term to quantify the signal-to-noise ratio.  It means the best possible readability with the best possible signal strength.  I.e., the signal is loud and clear.  By contrast, "one by one" would essentially mean "I can't figure out what you're telling me but that's OK, because I can't really hear you"...

Health Care Should Get "Smart" about Protecting Patient Data

Admit it: you're worried about your online privacy. Admit it: your personal health information is one of the things you worry most about getting hacked. Admit it: you don't understand why your health care providers seem to have a hard time sharing key information about you. And admit it, you're not quite sure what health insurers really do, except for always saying no and for getting between you and your health care providers. This is why blockchain is the new hope -- or hype -- for health care. What intrigues me most about it, though, are its "smart contracts." The GAO recently cited health as a key area of cybersecurity weakness, and TrendMicro profiled why cybercrime is a particular threat for health care...

Health Care's Kodak Moment

For those of us of a certain age, a "Kodak moment" connotes a special event that should be captured by a photo, presumably on Kodak film.  For younger generations,  the term probably doesn't mean anything, because they don't know what Kodak is and have never seen film.  That's why, for some, "Kodak moment" has come to suggest a turning point when big companies and even entire industries can become obsolete. Health care could soon be at such a point. Anthony Jenkins, a former CEO of Barclay's, recently warned that banks could face a Kodak moment soon...

HealthTap Unveils “HealthTap Cloud™”

Press Release | HealthTap | November 2, 2016

HealthTap...today unveiled HealthTap Cloud™, a first-of-its-kind development platform that enables health developers to build applications more efficiently and cost effectively. HealthTap Cloud™ is powered by HOPES™, the world’s first Health Operating System, which connects the entire continuum of care to each person’s unique Personal Health Record (PHR). Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Software Development Kits (SDKs) that help developers build highly personalized web, iOS, and Android apps are available with HealthTap Cloud™...

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HIMSS18: Key Exhibitor Booths for Open Solutions, Collaboration, and Interoperability

The annual gargantuan HIMSS conference is back at Las Vegas with over 40,000 participants, over a thousand exhibitors, and more than 600 presentations. As we saw last year in Orlando, more than half of the conference presentations are focused on applications based on open source such as FHIR and Blockchain, and a great emphasis on open solutions for interoperability. With so many presentations and exhibits, it is impossible to provide a full overview. Below are a few of some of the most interesting exhibits of open solutions this year.

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HIMSS20 - The Open Health Companies That Were Going to Participate

The HIMSS20 conference has been cancelled as a result of concerns due to the global spread of the coronavirus. Although the conference is not taking place, we have decided to publish a variation on our annual HIMSS conference Open Health Guide. Open Health News has published Open Health Guides to HIMSS conferences almost since our founding. They were widely read with thousands of reads each. So they are now a tradition for our publication and there were many great open health companies that were going to have exhibits at the HIMSS20 conference as well as presentations. Dominant health IT vendors spend over a billion dollars a year in PR and marketing for their lock-in solutions. Unable to match that kind of PR power, the annual HIMSS conference has been one of the few opportunities where Open Health companies have had to present their solutions to the world.

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Holochain – the Perfect Framework for Decentralized Cooperation at Scale

Holochain is a new technology project with huge potential for the cooperative economy. Members of The Open Co-op have been promoting the idea that new software could, potentially, revolutionize both our failing democracies and our predatory capitalist economies, since 2004. Back then we weren’t quite so clear on exactly how the required information architecture should be designed – but we knew what we wanted it to do and how it should work. In 2004, I published a paper entitled Participatory Democracy Networks, which explained how I thought some new information architecture could facilitate participatory democracy worldwide.

Hyperledger Project Continues Expansion of Open Source Blockchain Effort for the Enterprise

Press Release | Linux Foundation | March 29, 2016

The Linux Foundation...today is announcing the Hyperledger Project has filled key leadership positions and is welcoming new members. The Hyperledger Project is a collaborative effort to establish, build and sustain an open, distributed ledger platform that will satisfy a variety of use cases across multiple industries. The results of the Board of Directors and Technical Steering Committee elections for the Hyperledger Project include the following:

Hyperledger Project Reflects on Blockchain Politics

Ian Allison | International Business Times | January 27, 2017

Like any community, the blockchain world is also a political arena. Powerful consortia have emerged in a race to production, licencing spats occur and there's even a risk that patent enforcements could freeze innovation. The Hyperledger Project, which is now a major player in the space, gives blockchain the Linux Foundation treatment: fostering a series of open multi-stakeholder technology projects. Brian Behlendorf, the executive director of the Hyperledger Project, is a primary developer of the Apache Web server and a founding member of the Apache Software Foundation...

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