I don’t know about you, but I’ve been screaming for years about my frustration with how lightweight telehealth solutions are today. As I wrote in a recent telehealth post, I’m eager to see telehealth platforms emerge that take offer more robust services and integrate with enterprise care delivery platforms.
Given this, I was pleased to find some research describing telehealth solutions that leverage the blockchain. None seem entirely ready for universal use, but the technology which has already been developed seems intriguing.
The study, which was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, reviewed research delving into the feasibility of using blockchain technology in telemedicine. After conducting the review, the authors zoned in on 18 projects that met their selection criteria, which required that the chosen projects needed to play a role in offering telemedical services and use blockchain tech as a significant domain,
The researchers then analyzed features available among the projects, including medical data access, medical service processing, videoconferencing, epidemiology reporting, diagnostic support with AI, treatment support with AI, patient data aggregation, visit arrangements for medical procedures, ordering medicines from pharmacies, payment processing and fundraising.
The five most prevalent features of these solutions included medical data access (78%), medical service processing (78%), diagnostic support (56%), payment transactions (56%) and fundraising for telemedical instrument development (28%).
Some of the blockchain/telemedicine projects the researchers examined were already fully deployed. They included Medicalchain, a UK-based effort that mediates patients’ consultations with doctors and the Mexico-based Docademic system, which supports patient-doctor communication through videoconferencing and stores medical data in the blockchain system.
Another example came from the US-based Memorial Hermann Health Network, which helps connect patients and healthcare organizations and allows the parties to manage and control their data independently, as well as letting individual organizations provide data anonymously for scientific research.
The authors also took a look at the Russia-based Skychain project, an infrastructure designed for placement, training and use of AI to perform diagnostics. Skychain is using cryptocurrency to support smart contracts. Its ultimate goal is to allow doctors and patients across the network to share data and validate diagnoses.
Researchers also reviewed research on the U.S.-based DeepRadiology project, which reported on the first AI system which could interpret CT scan data at a performance level higher than that of doctors. This effort uses the blockchain to create a secure storage medium that safely stores and links disparate data sources.
Yet another example the study reviewed was the CareX system, which includes participants in the US, Canada and India. CareX focuses on offering a secure means of making international payments.
None of the projects described in the paper seem to have a particularly high profile or have reached full technical maturity. Regardless, it’s interesting to see the extent to which telehealth-related blockchain models are under development. If these models are fleshed out, they’re likely to offer some very beneficial add-ons to today’s telehealth platforms.
