Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), one of the top-five hospitals in the US, is partnering with Korean blockchain startup MediBloc in an effort to find better ways to store and share patient data.
Synho Do, director of the Laboratory of Medical Imaging and Computation, a joint venture of MGH and Harvard Medical School, told CoinDesk that the hospital is expanding research in a range of areas “from medical image analysis to health information exchange by leveraging our cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
Regarding this specific partnership, Do added:
“In collaboration with Medibloc, we aim to explore potentials of blockchain technology to provide secure solutions for health information exchange, integrate healthcare AI applications into the day-to-day clinical workflow, and support [a] data sharing and labeling platform for machine learning model development."The trouble with patient data is that multiple entities – hospitals, research bodies, insurance and pharmaceutical companies – need the information about those that are receiving medical help. But currently, they're all keeping their own data that can’t be shared securely and often is in various incompatible formats.