Although there are hurdles to implementing blockchain, such as the costs of setting up blockchain systems and the shortage of blockchain developers, it has many potential applications in anesthesiology, according to Anesthesia Business Consultants President and CEO Tony Mira.
Here are four insights:
1. Blockchain is a decentralized system that records peer-to-peer transaction records and stores and distributes them across all network participants. Proponents believe the distribution could improve the privacy and security of electronic protected health information. By contrast, the current healthcare system relies on centralized systems managed by intermediaries, such as EHR companies.
2. The Society for Technology in Anesthesia's 2018 Engineering Challenge encouraged participants to enter an Intubation Difficulty Score into a blockchain to facilitate a patient-anesthesiologist interaction in a way that enabled the anesthesiologist to access previous entries and securely add a new entry.
3. According to Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania's Jeffrey Mandel, MD, anesthesiologists require access to a specific aspect of the patient's medical history, previous difficulty with intubation. There may not be a standardized approach among cities or insurance carriers to labeling a patient as a 'difficult airway,' he said.
Blockchain could address this type of problem, according to Mr. Mira.
4. Proponents say blockchain could also solve broader healthcare problems of interoperability, privacy, security, transparency and patient access to information. Possible uses for the technology include empowering precision medicine clinical trials, improving data integrity and enhancing claims processing.