Vice President, Innovations and Chief Science Officer of IBM Watson Health Shahram Ebadollahi discusses with Becker's Hospital Review key opportunities for blockchain in healthcare.
Question: What do you think are the biggest two or three opportunities for blockchain in healthcare?
Shahram Ebadollahi: 1. Patient-mediated health data exchange: Blockchain can empower patients and data owners to control access to their healthcare data by using the blockchain as a system of record for patient consent and health data transfer activity. As patients gain control, health data will flow more efficiently across the healthcare system, enabling better understanding of patients through a complete longitudinal view of health events and data ("long data"), better access to new treatment options and better outcomes.
2. Outcome-based contracts and new reimbursement models: Blockchain will provide a trusted and efficient platform for supporting outcome-based settlements involving trusted data from multiple stakeholders. Outcome-based contracts, executed on a trusted blockchain data platform will allow pharmaceutical companies, payers and providers to share risks and advance innovative treatments in the marketplace at a faster pace and to the benefit of patients.
3) Next-gen clinical trials: A blockchain-based clinical trials platform will provide trusted data exchange automation, full auditability, provenance and traceability, ensuring the integrity of reported results and improving regulatory oversight and fraud detection.
Q: How can blockchain benefit healthcare providers? What advantages will patients see?
SE: Blockchain creates a secure, trusted and transparent ecosystem that allows providers to collaborate with partners in the healthcare ecosystem around high-trust, innovative solutions, including: patient-mediated health data exchange, outcome-based contracts and automated clinical trials, among others. Patient-mediated health data exchange networks will allow providers to gain visibility into patients' data and activities outside the clinical setting. Efficient patient data sharing will enable the deployment of innovative solutions for better risk management (such as outcome-based contracts), for qualifying patients for new treatment options (such as precision medicine) and for more efficient recruiting of clinical trial subjects.
Patients will be able to take control of all their health data and easily share it with providers as appropriate, while maintaining full visibility and manage consent on the blockchain network. By providing access to their health data, they will gain earlier access to new drugs and treatments, including precision medicine, and to qualify for participation in available clinical trials.
Q: What are the possibilities for clinicians and patients to manage personal health information on the blockchain?
SE: A patient-mediated health data exchange network will allow health data to flow more efficiently across the healthcare system. Patients will gain full control over their data through consent stored in the blockchain and full visibility of who is accessing their data and for what purpose. They will be able to easily share their information to sign up for new services, new treatments or clinical trials.
Clinicians will gain visibility into patients' activities and data generated outside clinical settings, and gain a better understanding of patients through a complete longitudinal data view of health events and data (long data). As a result, they will be able to better leverage innovative healthcare and wellness programs for their patients, qualify them for new medications and precision medicine treatments and help them reach better outcomes.
Q: How will blockchain change data gathering and clinical trials?
SE: Blockchain provides a unique platform for automating the gathering of information across all phases of a clinical trial and from all participants, by guaranteeing data integrity, ensuring transparency, traceability and full auditability. The trust and transparency properties of blockchain are uniquely suited to support the oversight and regulatory processes, and can dramatically increase the quality of clinical trials data and the ability to detect fraud. In addition, by making patient data more readily available, a patient-mediated health data exchange network will improve the effectiveness of the recruitment and qualification of clinical trial subjects. IBM is collaborating with the FDA on testing blockchain technology for providing a highly secure, scalable, decentralized framework that can enable integrity, provenance and transparency for data exchange.
Q: Where do you see blockchain for healthcare succeeding in the next five to 10 years? How can hospitals prepare?
SE: Patient consent and data exchange backed by blockchain will fundamentally change the way healthcare services are provided by making patient longitudinal data readily available and opening the door to new treatments, new care delivery models and better coordination of care. In particular, blockchain will facilitate access to precision medicine and to new wellness programs (including those delivered outside the health system but coordinated with it through exchange of data), with a potentially large impact on patient outcomes.
Hospitals need to start identifying the processes and solutions that can benefit from a trusted, transparent, cross-organizational platform like blockchain, and help them better fulfill their mission. They should start experimenting around these solutions in collaboration with their partners in the health ecosystem.