Question

Define the technology of Block Chain and how it differs from TCP/IP.

Discuss the impact of this new technology's potential to improve healthcare (such as mHealth), and how Block Chain could be applied to achieve those improvements.

Answer 1

The block Chain is a decentralized technology, A global network of computers uses block chain technology to jointly manage the database that records transactions. This is managed by its network, and not any one central authority. Block chain is not a protocol, block chain would be more similar to the email server a specific location that wants to transmit, or receive, or relay a specific set of information.

Everyone could choose to speak the language, but this would be the equivalent of routing email by requiring every message to be relayed through a single universal email server. Block chain is not an actual protocol, but one implementation of a protocol. It has significantly less success becoming an Internet standard as other singular instance of a ledger.

Due to improvements in genetic research and the advancement of precision medicine, health care is innovative approach to disease prevention and treatment that incorporates an individual patient’s genetic makeup, lifestyle and environment. IT advancement has large databases of health information, to track health data and engaged individuals in their own health care. Block chain technology has the potential to address the interoperability challenges present in health IT systems and to be the technical standard that enables individuals, health care providers, health care entities and medical researchers to securely share electronic health data.

Interoperability is a critical component any infrastructure supporting Patient Centered Outcomes Research and the Precision Medicine Initiative. A national health IT infrastructure based on block chain has reaching potential to promote the development of precision medicine, advance medical research and invite patients to be more accountable for their health

Members in the distributed network record digital transactions into a shared ledger. The shared ledger are reflected in all copies of the block chain in minutes or, in seconds. After a transaction is added it is immutable and cannot be changed or removed. Since all members in the network have a copy of the block chain no single member has the power to tamper or alter data. Block chain technology offers many advantages for health care IT. Block chain is based on open source software, commodity hardware,

Lack of data privacy and the absence of security make the public block chain unsuitable for a health block chain that requires privacy and controlled, auditable access. Any block chain for health care would need to be public and need to include technological solutions for key elements: scalability, access security and data privacy.

These components facilitate faster and easier interoperability between systems and efficiently scale to larger volumes of data and more block chain users. The architecture has built in fault tolerance and disaster recovery, and the data encryption and cryptography technologies are widely used and accepted Health providers and individuals would benefit from the wide range of application choices and select options that matched their specific requirements and needs.

Block chain would allow patients, the health care community and researchers to access one shared data source to obtain timely, accurate and comprehensive patient health data. As more health data is added to the block chain cost efficient commodity hardware can be easily added to handle the increased load. These technologies have been heavily analyzed and accepted as secure and are widely used across all industries and many government agencies.