How Permissioned Blockchains Can Protect and Empower Patients to Manage Their Health Data

Most - if not all - of us have encountered blockchain in the ever-changing landscape of data management and trading technology.

Blockchain technology is commonly associated with crypto or token-based models, where data is decentralized across peer-to-peer networks for organizations and applications. But there is another use of this technology, permissioned blockchains, that has high potential for implementation across the healthcare system. In this blog, Thrive Health and emTRUTH will outline just how this works, and address some common myths around how blockchain can be used for health data management.

Blockchain technology implements a distributed ledger or database across the nodes of a computer network. Blockchain is a list of records, called blocks, that are securely linked together using cryptography, where each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data.

A useful way of outlining the differences between token-based blockchains and permissioned blockchains is to understand an application versus an encryption. A crypto or token-based model (i.e. Bitcoin, Ethereum) is an application. In contrast, blockchain technology is encryption, and therefore does not need to use the same formula to create a coin or token representing the asset. emTRUTH and Thrive Health use this technology to further secure healthcare data by capturing actual data assets inside blockchains, making the data the asset.

To further illustrate why blockchain as an encryption technology is favourable to a token-based model, here are three key reasons centered around making healthcare more efficient, secure, and patient-centric:

1. Patient Data Protection and Security:

Healthcare data is highly protected and sensitive, hence why we need to control data access. Traditionally, crypto-based models mean that there is no way of knowing where the data comes from, and the data is public by default. In a distributed data management application, blockchain technology allows users to protect and provide access to data with patient consent for only those authorized to see it.

2. Speed of Transactions:

Operational healthcare systems require efficient, sustainable and reliable transactions to keep up with their fast-paced environments. However, most healthcare systems average 4-15 transactions per second, which is nowhere near the required speed for high-functioning operations.

Thrive Health and emTRUTH’s patented technology allows systems to overcome this hurdle. Transactions are two orders of magnitude (i.e. 1000s per second) faster and designed for distributed data management at the enterprise level. Furthermore, this technology treats data as an asset within a blockchain making it more secure with encryption at a more granular level.

3. Sustainability and Scalibility:

Blockchain systems of a public and anonymous nature are inherently trustless due to the lack of validity and data from unknown sources. Organizations usually use an intensive method such as coin mining to verify and validate these systems. However, these exhaustive methods can negatively impact the environment due to the amount of energy required to authenticate this data, rendering it unsustainable.

However, using methods of consensus (e.g. proof of stake, proof of authority, proof of history) that are less intensive enables a sustainable and scalable method across the healthcare industry.

‍Thrive Health and emTRUTH have partnered to transform the healthcare industry with innovative blockchain technology that protects personal health information and keeps it secure. To learn more about working with Thrive Health and emTRUTH, connect with us below.