The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and IBM are working together to develop a blockchain-based system that tracks public health issues, such as the ongoing opioid crisis.
IBM and the CDC National Health Statistics Center tested the new system using simulation data. The system makes it easier for CDCs to investigate data from medical providers about the reasons for patient visits and the symptoms they display. The Centers for Disease Control has collected most of the data through surveys such as the National Outpatient Medical Survey and the National Hospital Outpatient Medical Survey, which collects patient visits from doctors and hospitals across the country. Data from the CDC survey are currently being used to study all the cases from the frequency of patients seeking sleep care to the doctors taking antibiotics and opioid analgesics.
Using the blockchain approach makes it easier to automatically collect data, keep it secure, and record who accessed which parts of it.
“The blockchain seems to give us a lot of transparency,†said Askari Rizvi, Director of Technical Services, Medical Statistics Division, CDC.
A blockchain that is somewhat similar to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin will store data for medical files provided to the CDC. David McElroy, head of blockchain technology at the IBM federal government department, said that the blockchain itself does not store data, but it tracks who can access which data to help protect potentially sensitive patient information.
Researchers, disease control centers, and healthcare providers can all connect to the blockchain to update and access information about who is granted access to which data. The medical records obtained through the hospital's electronic record system are themselves encrypted and stored in IBM's cloud system, and only those authorized through the blockchain can obtain the encryption key.
"Our cloud is running an authorization service," McElroy said.
The blockchain may still be most often associated with cryptocurrencies, and as the secure digital ledger is used to track who owns each currency unit, a growing copy of the record chain is automatically copied to anyone who wants it. But companies like IBM and Microsoft are exploring how to use this technology to synchronize data in more traditional industries, such as login and transaction log data between business partners such as health service providers and disease control centers. Automated data replication is not just a reliable audit trail to help maintain digital currency.
The next step in the CDC experiment may be to work with companies such as electronic health record providers to further test the system with simulated data. There is no exact timeline to explain when this blockchain can be deployed with real-world information, but Rizvi says he hopes that one day it will help public health officials gather more information from medical institutions.
“Our idea is to get other data sets that we don't currently have,†he said.
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