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Illinois to Put Baby’s First Health Data on Blockchain

By Deborah Dobson posted 11-21-2017 15:50

  

Babies born in Illinois may soon have their foundational health documents stored on the blockchain. Illinois is taking the lead in exploring the use of healthcare-related issues such as provider identity management. The Illinois Blockchain Initiative announced its partnership on August 31, 2017 with self-sovereign identity solutions leader Evernym, leveraging distributed ledger technology (DLT) to provide secure digital identity solutions. Self-sovereign identity refers to a digital identity that remains entirely under the individual's control. A self-sovereign identity can be efficiently and securely validated by entities who require it, free from reliance on a centralized repository.

Jennifer O'Rourke, Blockchain Business Liaison for the Illinois Blockchain Initiative, explains why they want to integrate DLT into the birth registration process.

"To structurally address the many issues surrounding digital identity, we felt it was important to develop a framework that examines identity from its inception at child birth."

Blockchain theoretically allows patients to approve new providers access to their existing, verified, and unified record. Current electronic health records require each unique healthcare provider to recreate a patient's entire health history in-house.

The pilot, conducted in partnership with Evernym, will experiment with creating "verifiable claims" or attributes for newborns including legal name, date of birth, and blood type, all cryptographically secured into the individual's identity. This will only be accessible with the legal guardian's explicit permission and the transfer to the individual upon becoming an adult.

This pilot follows an August partnership with Hashed Health, a healthcare-specific blockchain consortium, to explore how to apply DLT to the complex issue of managing credentials and licensure for healthcare individuals. The pilot program will employ a blockchain-based registry to improve the way medical credential data is shared and stored.

These are just a couple of blockchain initiatives, but there are many more in virtually every industry and across the globe. To learn more about Blockchain, visit:

Resources for Learning about Blockchain

Blockchain Roundup – A Guide to ILTA & Non-ILTA Blockchain Content

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12-14-2017 14:36

​​"Current electronic health records require each unique healthcare provider to recreate a patient's entire health history in-house." YES, anything to avoid filling out the same paperwork!