The Script: Health care informatics leader shares expertise on blockchain across the nation

COPHS Staff | 

Dr. Kevin Clauson, also a primary instructor and mentor in the health informatics program, was also busy this summer speaking on blockchain technology and winning awards for his educational work at Lipscomb.

Clauson, associate professor in the health care informatics and pharmacy programs, was a featured speaker this summer at Blockchain in Supply Chain, a conference held in Austin, Texas, as part of the Blockchain Conference Network.

Clauson spoke on blockchain technology’s capacity to satisfy requirements of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act. His presentation covered work begun two years ago by Dr. Cameron Davidson (PHARMD ’17), who was a student pharmacist at the time and is now employed by pharmacy technology company PioneerRx.

Clauson was also able to demonstrate Lipscomb’s leadership at the intersection of blockchain and education at venues including the University of California, San Diego, and Oral Roberts University, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the Blockchain Essentials in Education Conference in May.

In Tulsa, Clauson accepted the Blockchain for Education Collaboration Award on behalf of Lipscomb University and their collaborators at Nashville startup Hashed Health, in establishing the Hashed Health Consortium. The award is presented to the team who has worked across groups, teams, vendors and associations to make the greatest stride for blockchain within education.

This Hashed Health Consortium has already resulted in various academic accomplishments at Lipscomb:

  • Pharmacy and informatics students participated in the Distributed Health Hackathon, using blockchain technology to create VacVerify, a secure database system for vaccination records, and later presented their work to all Lipscomb’s student pharmacists.
  • A group from Lipscomb, in partnership with Hashed Health, developed an innovative system using Ethereum, another type of distributed ledger technology, to allow potential employers to verify the academic credentials of Lipscomb’s health care informatics and pharmacy graduates. The program is designed to combat the increasingly common problem of job applicants claiming academic credentials they have not actually earned.
  • A Lipscomb student and Clauson have been published in the biomedical journal International Journal of Health Geographics presenting an accessible but technically sound explanation of blockchain and how it relates to opportunities in health care and health geographics.

Clauson rounded out his summer travel in Toronto to deliver an invited presentation at the Blockchain in Healthcare Canada event.