I agree and have some similar questions. I am trying to understand, Is it really so simple to utilize the blockchain in healthcare specially for the patient data.
Are there complexities which either are already taken care of or are not yet understood so not even talked about.
Also considering that this data will be global and each country has different regulations, which would be considered?
Hoping to understand this is due course of this discussion and looking forward for some experts in this field to shed lights on how this is being done currently.
I have worked in the healtcare industry myself for about 8 years in the past (i'm currently not working in the healthcare industry anymore), i do think you're touching a very delicate subject.
In the past, there were some really tough laws in place to protect patients data, and recently the laws seems to have gotten a lot tougher.
I remember having to encrypt all data that was being sent to the governement, upload it to a sftp whose keys were exchanged in person, then send the encryption key on a dvd via snail mail, and the password to unlock the key via text message, and the hash of the encrypted data in a signed letter to a different instance... I just wanted to point out that even in the past, the security measures with patient data were rather paranoid
The problem is that a blockchain is a public, immutable, trustless, decentralised ledger. Anything data you include in a block is there to stay.
- What if the patient changes his mind? There is no way to "erase" his data
- What if data that is considered harmless at this point in time, becomes something of great intrest/value to for example insurance companies (for example, at this moment in time, you think it might be a good idear to record your pollen alergy into a blockchain, but in 50 years pollen alergies get linked to a specific type of terminal iless and an isurance company decides to double the premiums for everybody having a pollen alergy based on this data
- I've also heared some companies saying that anonimising the patient's data is the sollution, but what if the key gets leaked? What if one of the hospital's databases gets breached and a hacker is able to link each anonymous key to a real life person?
I'm not saying it's a bad idear, i just think a person who wants to develop such a blockchain should do their homework and think about as many attack vectors as humanly possible before writing a single line of code.