HIPAA Blog

[ Friday, September 23, 2016 ]

 

Magical Incantations of Blockchain: I must confess: I was a liberal arts major, and I've never written a line of code in my life.  So maybe I'm just an idiot (a real possibility), but I just don't see how Blockchain works, and how it's going to be the next great thing in healthcare.  My understanding is that the benefit of Blockchain is that there's no intermediary in transactions, and no central location for storing transaction information.  Rather, multiple parties can view the chain links so as to ensure that the links are correct, and that's why no intermediary is needed to ensure that both parties to the transaction are presenting it identically.  However, that seems to allow a lot of additional people to view a transaction, including people who aren't connected to it, and that would cause HIPAA problems if there's PHI in the transaction.  This article indicates that only authorized persons can view the transactions; who authorizes them?  And if they're interested parties, what's to prevent them from tampering with the transaction information (in a way that an intermediary would prevent)?

I just don't get it.  Anyone got a good explainer for this?

Jeff [5:29 PM]

Comments: Post a Comment
http://www.blogger.com/template-edit.g?blogID=3380636 Blogger: HIPAA Blog - Edit your Template