summary

In the healthcare industry, blockchain can provide utility by guaranteeing data persistence and availability. Ensuring the integrity and accessibility of medical records is extremely important, as it could literally save someone’s life. However, this data should also be private. Medicalchain seeks to tackle this problem by storing access to medical data on the blockchain, only allowing access upon authorization from the user’s mobile device. It’s quite similar to a medical-focused uPort, except the data is stored in the same place it is now - in the hospitals you visit. Other groups using blockchains for medical data include MIT’s MedRec, Taipei Medical University Hospital, and, surprisingly, Wal-mart, whose product will allow EMTs to view the medical record of unresponsive patients. Blockchain is also particularly useful for providing financial incentives for good behavior, which, interestingly enough, could have a positive impact on the efficacy of modern healthcare. Sweatcoin is an app that will pay you to walk, tracking your GPS movements and counting your steps using technology already built into your phone and rewarding you in Sweatcoins, which can be exchanged for things like Paypal Cash, an iPhone, or product discounts. Sounds crazy, but Sweatcoin purportedly has ‘converted’ some 2 trillion steps into cryptocurrency. Mint Health takes a similar, but more medical approach, providing Vidamint tokens for good behaviors ranging from checking one’s blood sugar to attending a health-related webinar, to recording steps. These tokens can be exchanged for rewards such as lower insurance premiums. Insurance as an industry is also slated to be radically changed by the blockchain.