The Script: Health care informatics receives national attention for blockchain efforts
Janel Shoun-Smith |
MHCI chair discussed blockchain, the database technology behind Bitcoin, at SXSW
Professors and students in Lipscomb’s health care informatics master’s program have received national attention this summer for their research and education efforts on blockchain technology, the secure database technology behind Bitcoin.
This past March, Beth Breeden, associate professor and director of graduate studies in health care informatics, was invited to be part of a panel discussing the emerging uses of blockchain technology in health care at one of America’s premier music, tech and film festivals: South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW, in Austin, Texas
Dr. Kevin Clauson, associate professor in the health care informatics and pharmacy programs, was also busy this summer speaking on blockchain technology at Blockchain in Supply Chain, a conference held in Austin, Texas, as part of the Blockchain Conference Network, and winning the Blockchain for Education Collaboration Award.
In addition, Clauson and Tom Wilson, a fourth-year student in the dual Pharm.D. and MHCI program from Columbia, Tennessee, published an article on blockchain technology titled “Geospatial Blockchain: Promises, Challenges and Scenarios in Health and Healthcare” in the peer-reviewed biomedical journal International Journal of Health Geographics.
Breeden at SXSW
South by Southwest overtakes Austin for ten days each spring. Started in the 1980s, it has steadily grown to more than 100,000 singing, blogging, tweeting and texting young and old participants who want a front row seat for peering into the future.
The tech portion of SXSW, a world-renowned event, is recognized as a premier conference on emerging technology, where innovators from around the globe showcase their solutions. This year’s offerings included more than 2,100 sessions plus a futuristic trade and exhibit show. Guest speakers included entrepreneur Elon Musk as well as a host of recognizable influencers in the entertainment industry and politics.
Breeden participated in the tech portion of the conference on a panel discussing use of blockchain technology in health care.
“Blockchain was identified as one of the 12 significant programming trends for SXSW18. It was explored for its potential to positively impact industries ranging from health care to finance to entertainment. There were nearly 40 blockchain sessions offered,” said Breeden, who has been instrumental in bringing various technology partnerships to Lipscomb to benefit pharmacy and informatics students as well as their future patients.
Several blockchain use cases were discussed by Breeden’s panel at SXSW, including Lipscomb College of Pharmacy’s blockchain graduation verification solution, Nashville-based Hashed Health’s provider licensure and credentialing program, Change Healthcare’s enterprise-scale payment transaction and claims processing solutions and HealthVerity’s e-consent application.
This past year, Lipscomb became a member of the Hashed Health Consortium, a group of organizations led by Nashville-based Hashed Health devoted to leveraging blockchain and distributed ledger technologies to transform the health care industry. Lipscomb was the first academic institution to join the consortium.
“We identified the health care crisis as primarily a financial one, with excessive prices, too much friction and outcomes peppered across the care continuum leaving much to be desired,” Breeden said of the panel discussion. “Many of the inefficiencies in health care stem from solutions which negatively impact workflow, stifle interoperability, don’t offer ample security and most importantly, fail to adequately include the patient.
Enter blockchain, which is a decentralized, distributed and public ledger of digital transactions shared across a network of computers. Blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin, is recognized for its ability to share data in a secure and tamperproof way,” she said.
“Of great interest to the SXSW audience was the question of whether blockchain-enabled electronic health records would provide solutions to the health care crisis. There was agreement that the potential is certainly there but solutions are not scaled as of yet,” Breeden said.
“Blockchain development is in its infancy but holds the potential to have a great impact on health care by allowing immediate access, for example, to safe and trusted data elements associated with patients, patient care, providers, health care claims, etc. Significant efforts are underway to develop solutions in this space, and the next one to two years promise to be some of the most exciting.”
Clauson awarded for blockchain efforts
At the Blockchain in Supply Chain conference, also held in Austin, Texas, 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 Lipscomb student pharmacist at the time and is now employed by pharmacy technology company PioneerRx.
Later in the summer, Clauson accepted the Blockchain for Education Collaboration Award on behalf of Lipscomb and its collaborators at Nashville startup Hashed Health, for their work to establish the Hashed Health Consortium.
The award, presented at the Blockchain Essentials in Education Conference at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, honors a team who has worked across groups, teams, vendors and associations to make the greatest strides for blockchain within education.
This Hashed Health Consortium has already resulted in various academic accomplishments at Lipscomb such as student creation of VacVerify, a database system for vaccination records using secure blockchain technology and development of a program to verify the academic credentials of Lipscomb’s health care informatics and pharmacy graduates using another secure database technology, Ethereum.
Clauson rounded out his summer travel by speaking on blockchain and education at the University of California, San Diego, and in Toronto, Cananda, the Blockchain in Healthcare Canada event.
Student published in biomedical journal
The “Geospatial Blockchain” article, by Clauson and Wilson, his first published piece, provides an accessible but technically sound explanation of blockchain and how it relates to opportunities in health care and health geographics, said Clauson.
The article, published in July, capped off a complete school year of Wilson’s academic accomplishments regarding blockchain technology.
Click here to read Wilson's and Clauson's article.
Wilson was one of six students nationwide to be accepted into the Stanford University Medicine X Emerging Leader Program, allowing him to attend Stanford MedX, the university’s premier program focusing on how emerging technologies will advance health care while enabling patients to be active participants in their own care.
At the MedX conference, Wilson was able to gain insight on blockchain technology, artificial technology and machine learning and how best to implement these powerful tools in the health care system.
He also attended the Distributed Health Conference and Code Camp in Nashville in 2017, the first conference held in the world on blockchain technology in health care. Three Lipscomb students, including Wilson, 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.