BlackBerry unveiled a blockchain solution targeted toward the healthcare industry Oct. 4, along with plans to use the technology to support rare disease research.
BlackBerry's network operation center will power a blockchain ledger provided by biotech incubator ONEBIO. Blockchain describes a permanent ledger of online transactions or exchanges, which, unlike a traditional database, is shared among a network of users rather than being maintained by one party.
The blockchain solution will serve as a global ecosystem for storing and sharing medical data, so that patients, laboratories or biometric devices could input data that is anonymized and then shared with researchers.
The first organization to use the blockchain solution is the Global Commission to End the Diagnostic Odyssey for Children with a Rare Disease, which will pilot BlackBerry's tool to see if it supports real-time actionable analysis of patient data to accelerate diagnoses.