Gem working on blockchain solutions for healthcare sector

Bitcoin startup Gem is collaborating with a number of partners in the healthcare sector in which its shared ledger and data security platform is taking use cases from prototype to production, reported the International Business Times (IBTimes) UK.

“The healthcare industry is looking at how they can use blockchains in a number of ways: to transport medical records from provider to provider and build those sorts of networks; as well as how they can use health data generally to incentivise people to be healthier, to build reward systems around healthy behaviour using IoT [Internet of Things] devices, all sorts of stuff,” said Gem CEO Micah Winkelspecht to IBTimes UK.

The publication reported that Gem is under NDA with a number of firms in the healthcare sector and announcements are forthcoming. The goal is to develop a golden record of health data that is secure and transferable.

“We are talking about how we can combine all of the data that’s collected across your entire health experience into a single system that transports across multiple companies,” said Winkelspecht. “We are partnering with those companies from prototype to production, and it’s a very exciting collaboration.”

IBTimes UK noted that Gem has a core platform for developing blockchain application layer solutions that are composed of four products: Gem Identity, Gem Logic, Gem Data, and Gem Network. Used together, these products can build an entire blockchain ecosystem and application.

Gem founder and CEO Micah Winkelspecht

Winkelspecht told IBTimes UK that Gem fielded lots of inquiries last year about applying this technology to the broader financial industry, and in the past six months there has been growing interest from non-financial sectors such a healthcare, media, Internet of Things, and IT infrastructure. In these cases, data integrity and identity are fundamental to infrastructure upgrades.

“Identity is a huge component of what we do,” said Winkelspecht. “In a blockchain your ID is managed by public key/private key cryptography so you are using private keys to create digital signatures to authorise and sign any transaction on that network. We have been meeting with banks to solve identity problems with this technology; conversation we have been having for over a year.”

Winkelspecht added, “Blockchains provide strong data integrity which doesn’t just apply to the financial world, but applied to every major business. All of our systems rely on underlying data to make business decisions. If we record a hash of a document or a record and we put it on the blockchain it gives guarantees; it becomes impossible or very difficult to compromise that data and change it later. You know your data is tamper-proof and you have time stamps of everything. That is the foundation layer of building all types of automated systems.”

IBTimes said recent reports on blockchain technology have observed that healthcare is lagging when it comes to touting use cases, possibly because of stringent data privacy rules that vary from place to place. But healthcare was one of the first sectors to start considering the technology, noted Winkelspecht.

“We are doing on-site education with key stakeholders in the space,” he said. “We are helping them to identify use cases in their businesses and ultimately build those out all the way from a proof of concept to production applications. We are doing that for several companies in the space.”

Images courtesy of Gem