Multi-Party Data Sharing in Healthcare: A Consortium Blockchain Approach
Healthcare data sharing is the classic enterprise blockchain use case that's been promised for a decade and delivered almost nowhere. The problem isn't technology — it's that the technology was too complex for the organizations that needed it.
A regional healthcare network typically involves: 3-8 hospitals, 2-4 insurance carriers, dozens of specialty clinics, pharmaceutical companies running clinical trials, and public health agencies. Each operates its own EHR system. Each has different data formats, privacy policies, and access control rules. Each is legally prohibited from sharing certain data without explicit patient consent.
A permissioned blockchain with per-record encryption and consent management solves the coordination problem without requiring any single organization to centralize control of the data.