Blockchain Applications and Use Cases in Health Information Technology

Abstract

Blockchain technology and the associated cryptocurrencies have the ability to transform industries including healthcare. We suggest the decentralized and programmable nature of blockchain applications can be used to change health information technology to gain greater efficiency in public and private health care systems. Current public health information technology systems such as eligibility, enrollment and electronic health records have documented issues with interoperability and are slow to adapt to changing program and technology demands. We suggest that blockchain can potentially solve these issues. We argue that a public program such as the U.S. Medicaid program with $553 Billion in total program costs and over $25 Billion spent on health information technology and administration last fiscal year could benefit from the use of blockchain based distributed ledger and smart contracts. We finally argue that a decentralized benefits administration system can provide greater efficiency to enrollment, eligibility, claims payment and adjudication processes thus driving efficiency and reducing systemic fraud.