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COVID-19 has created significant groundswell around the healthcare industry, while also bringing to light some of its most prevalent pain points. Several sectors have been understaffed and overworked throughout various stages of this ongoing public health emergency, while connected issues like supply chain shortages and delays have contributed to their own related crises.

These challenges haven’t only been on the side of healthcare providers, however—patients and those looking to enter the healthcare system also face the consequences of the continued strain on medical institutions. For example, the increased dependence on telehealth has introduced a new vector for cybersecurity attacks, which have threatened the privacy of patients and resulted in a notable uptick in identity theft.

To address current difficulties and create the infrastructure needed to be better prepared in the future, the healthcare space doesn’t only need more resources—it needs more advanced ones too.  One of the most appealing and comprehensive solutions to achieve this is blockchain, which has numerous applications relating to the medical field, its partners and patients. By integrating blockchain, healthcare providers can operate more safely and efficiently, eliminating much of the administrative work and ancillary tasks that keep professionals from their main responsibility of caring for and working with patients.

Current patient data challenges

The digitization of the healthcare experience brings significant opportunities for efficiency and convenience, but as reliance on technology in medicine expands, so too do the potential risks. Patient data protection has been a sore spot in healthcare since long before the pandemic, with the transition to digital records potentially leaving information vulnerable to unwanted parties. Medical data becoming more accessible and shareable while traceability trails behind makes it harder to enforce HIPAA, and this is only magnified by unwitting and malicious actors. Telehealth has also been a major contributor to medical data risks, since it necessitates a greater degree of information being shared electronically and therefore presents more opportunities for third parties to steal that sensitive information.

The main use case for blockchain in this context is self-sovereign identity. Self-sovereign identity is a technology that lends blockchain capabilities to established digital identity models to alleviate some of their long-standing issues. Historically, digital identity has gone through two major variants prior to self-sovereign identity: siloed identity and federated identity.

Siloed digital identity

Siloed identity will be familiar to anyone who has ever had to register for a website or service. The user provides their information and creates an identity for each individual institution they go through, which all operate independently or in “silos”. This system has been criticized both for the fact that a user must remember credentials for many organizations and expose themselves to considerable risk by sharing personal information with so many different entities.

Federated digital identity

Federated identity was introduced as an identity model that would consolidate logins and the number of parties with access to a user’s information, since it only requires one identity and set of credentials that can be used across various organizations. Examples of federated identity include Paypal, which facilitates payments to storefronts and individuals without sharing private information with them, and platforms like Google and Facebook, which can be used to register or sign in to different services without needing to create a new siloed identity.

Though federated identity did improve upon its predecessor in some significant ways, it still has the disadvantage of giving information to a large, centralized entity which could possibly be breached or sell a user’s data. Federated identity suffers from not working with all services while also presenting a significant possibility of a single point of failure, with an entire set of identities and logins being tied to a single provider.  
 

Data protection through self-sovereign identity implementation

Self-sovereign identity introduces a new solution that combines many of the benefits of both other models, while also leveraging unique blockchain capabilities. Rather than leaving personal data in the hands of other parties, self-sovereign identity proposes that the user be the owner and controller of their identity, which they can share selectively and on a case-by-case basis.

Thanks to being on the blockchain, self-sovereign identity can operate in a decentralized fashion, which means it can circumvent the ownership concerns present in the other identity models. Its usage of the blockchain also ensures that personal data can be encrypted and therefore only selectively visible to specific parties.

Another important differentiator between self-sovereign identity and other identity models is the amount of information a user is required to share. When registering for a siloed or federated identity, there are many times when a user will have to share information they would rather not disclose or is irrelevant or excessive. By contrast, self-sovereign identity grants a very granular level of control with each interaction.

Self-sovereign identity implementation

Using self-sovereign identity, an individual could choose to only disclose the fact that they have received post-natal care before, without having to share details on when and where they received it, how many times they’ve gone through the procedure or any personal information about their children. Other examples of selective sharing of information through self-sovereign identity might be confirming that one is or isn’t a senior citizen without providing their date of birth, proving they live in a certain state or go to a specific hospital without giving their home address or proving that they are insured without having to provide information on the provider.

Limiting access to personal information through the blockchain also helps cut off many logistical challenges and risks that arise from other forms of storage. Unlike paper records or database storage, there is no risk of identity data being lost by one’s healthcare provider—or worse, stolen. Additionally, this comes with the benefit of greatly simplifying the process of changing providers, since one doesn’t have to worry about what will happen to their old records or how they will go about transferring information to a new provider.

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