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They seldom receive access to personalized treatment options, referral support and adherence alerts outside physician offices in real time. This raises important questions around patient data ownership, access, and privacy issues with current HIT systems and emerging digital health solutions. Additionally, in this multilayered digital patient engagement space, interoperability and trusted workflows will be critical for future success.
Blockchain, as an open-sourced tool with peer-to-peer data-sharing networking models, provides identity management features with predefined user access rules to increase patients’ control over their health data and reliability for patient engagement initiatives. Further, permanent storage of encrypted patient-generated health data on immutable blockchain systems could provide a single, simplified view of patient data. This, in turn, empowers consumers to selectively share their anonymized personal health data for research, direct payment of incentive and health tokens toward positive and healthy behavior, and other adherence programs.