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The use of Bitcoin’s underlying technology across various industry segments doesn’t need any introduction. But the active participation of government institutions in promoting the implementation of distributed ledger technology deserves to be acknowledged.
The US Department of Health and Human Services is working with the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a blockchain advocacy group with some of the leading businesses as members to promote the development and implementation of blockchain-based applications in the healthcare sector. As a part of this initiative, both the organizations are co-hosting the “Blockchain in Healthcare Code-A-Thon”.
The announcement of an upcoming hackathon, scheduled on March 14-15 of 2017 was made earlier today. With this initiative, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has become the first US government entity to organize a distributed ledger technology focused hackathon. While referring to the government entity’s involvement, the founder, and president of Chamber of Digital Commerce, Perianne Boring was quoted saying,
“The participation of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services speaks volumes about the serious, long-term potential application of blockchain to the healthcare sector. This competition will highlight the wide-reaching benefits of blockchain and distributed ledger solutions while creating new opportunities for innovation in the healthcare industry.”
The organizers of Blockchain in Healthcare Code-A-Thon encourage participants to make use of open source blockchain technology to solve issues plaguing the modern healthcare industry. The participants in Blockchain in Healthcare Code-A-Thon will be working on three main areas: Identity Management and APIs, Metadata Tagging and Policy Expression, and Data Aggregation and Linkage.
The major use cases for blockchain technology in healthcare industry lies in medical records management. The immutable nature of the blockchain, combined with its security features makes it ideal for creating, storing, sharing, and managing confidential patient records while offering adequate control over it to the patients and respective healthcare professionals.
Given the involvement of both private and government entities in promoting blockchain technology for the healthcare industry, the products developed during Blockchain in Healthcare Code-A-Thon may find its way to the market much faster than other similar products.
Ref: Media Release | Image: NewsBTC
