Blockchain Solutions: An Opportunity for Anesthesiologists and Their Patients

Radius Anesthesia

What is Blockchain Technology? A growing number of leaders in the healthcare industry are looking to

blockchain technology as a means of increasing the accessibility and interoperability of medical information.

First used to record trades of the online crypto-currency Bitcoin, blockchain technology documents online transactions while ensuring that those transactions are secure.

Encrypts each piece of information, or “block,” contained in its record with a string of numbers and letters. This unique code can be checked to confirm the validity of the data contained

in its corresponding block. It also serves as documentation of the block’s history, changing each time its

contents are edited or accessed without permission. Information stored using blockchain technology can be retrieved by

many computers on a single network, without the use of an expensive central database.

Blockchain Technology for Healthcare

Bruce Broussard, the CEO of Humana, extolled the merits of blockchain in an article last August, writing that it was “positioned to be the next dramatic innovation in health care.” He pointed to the potential for blockchain to supplant intermediary Health

Information Exchanges (HIE’s) as one of its advantages, an opportunity to reduce “transaction time, fees and fraud” in health industry operations conducted online.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) also put on a competition designed to encourage the development of blockchain solutions for the health care industry, inviting groups from across the country to submit their recommendations for how the technology should be used

Gem, a major blockchain developer, recently created Gem Health, a branch of its operations dedicated to finding blockchain solutions for the health sector.

IBM’s Watson Health is also working with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate potential uses for blockchain in the public health field.

Obstacles for Blockchain Technology in Healthcare

Healthcare leaders still have doubts, however, about the feasibility of creating large scale blockchain solutions.

More than fifty percent of the managers interviewed by IBM cited “poor technology,” “insufficient skills,” and “regulation” as possible obstructions to the advent of blockchain in the health sector.

A report by Tierion, a prominent blockchain data platform, echoed the sentiments of the managers. The authors of the report warned that the cost of switching between blockchain

vendors could be “prohibitively expensive,” thereby granting suppliers of blockchain platforms greater power to raise prices without fear of losing revenue. The nascent state of blockchain technology, the authors explained, also makes it more costly to set up blockchain systems. There are relatively few blockchain developers, and they will likely charge more for their services as demand grows in the coming years.

Blockchain Technology and the Anesthesia Services Sector

Firms in the anesthesia services sector and their patients could gain from the wide-scale implementation of blockchain technology platforms.

Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs), physician anesthesiologists and anesthesiology assistants would be able to see realtime updates of their patients’ medical information as other physicians uploaded new data on shared patients to the blockchain.

Anesthesiologists and their patients could rest assured that their electronic medical records, once a target for malicious hackers, were secure, protected by the blockchain’s encryption codes.

Patients would also have greater access to their own medical information, and direct control over which health organizations were allowed to view and edit their data.

Companies in the anesthesia services sector will have to weigh these potential benefits against the costs of blockchain, however, including the high fixed cost of developing a blockchain platform and the risk of using relatively untested technology.

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Radius Anesthesia