IBM is partnering with a group of insurers and financial organizations to design and create a network using blockchain technology to improve transparency and interoperability in the healthcare industry.
The goal of IBM’s collaboration with Aetna, Anthem, Health Care Service Corp. (HCSC) and PNC Bank is to allow a blockchain network to enable healthcare companies to build, share and deploy solutions that drive digital transformation. The collaboration members intend to use blockchain — a distributed ledger that it is durable, time-stamped, transparent and decentralized — to address challenges such as promoting efficient claims and payment processing, enabling secure and frictionless healthcare information exchanges, and maintaining current and accurate provider directories.
"Blockchain's unique attributes make it suitable for large networks of members to quickly exchange sensitive data in a permissioned, controlled, and transparent way," said Lori Steele, general manager for Healthcare and Life Sciences for IBM, in a prepared statement. "The fact that these major healthcare players have come together to collaborate indicates the value they see in working together to explore new models that we think could drive more efficiency in the healthcare system and ultimately improve the patient experience."
Speaking at a conference last October, John Halamka, M.D., CIO of Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess System, described how blockchain could speed up the progress of health data exchange. “The reluctance to exchange data has nothing to do with technology. It’s about psychiatry. Having a trust layer that is immutable will help with those issues,” he said. Halamka is editor of the journal Blockchain in Healthcare Today.
