I was recently contracted to consult with a company working on a Blockchain product. After 30 minutes; I made most of their engineering team realise they weren’t building a solution to a problem. Their marketing/corporate team not so much. A thread...
The company is building #blockchain based solution for maintaining health records. Health records should be private and #blockchain with its encrypted store seemed like a great solution to them. I asked them a series of Q&A to help them understand their solution.
1. Do we need to share the encrypted data?
Yes, with doctors & others. If you have to share results with doctor in plain text what is the point of having it encrypted in the first place? The data will just leak out.
Yes, with doctors & others. If you have to share results with doctor in plain text what is the point of having it encrypted in the first place? The data will just leak out.
2. Is the #blockchain public or private?
If its private; its not really decentralised. If distributed is what you were looking for there are much efficient solutions available.
If its private; its not really decentralised. If distributed is what you were looking for there are much efficient solutions available.
3. #Blockchain is #decentralised and will help keep the data #distributed preventing Google like data monster.
With data which you want at realtime basis; do you want a headless organisation who have no QoS guarantee or a organisation whom you can sue for poor QoS?
With data which you want at realtime basis; do you want a headless organisation who have no QoS guarantee or a organisation whom you can sue for poor QoS?
4. #Blockchain with its #decentralised data will enable faster data storage and recovery
Incorrect; #blockchain is by design slow. Bitcoin makes a block every 10 minutes. 10 minutes delay in medicine is life/death.
Incorrect; #blockchain is by design slow. Bitcoin makes a block every 10 minutes. 10 minutes delay in medicine is life/death.
5. Can’t we make the blocks faster by just changing the algorithm?
You may but that would result in more blocks which leads to more storage. With #blockchain already we are wasting space by replicating data across all full nodes, how much data storage do we want to waste?
You may but that would result in more blocks which leads to more storage. With #blockchain already we are wasting space by replicating data across all full nodes, how much data storage do we want to waste?
6. #Blockchain provides a good database to store a ton of data
Not really, #blockchain isn't a database. It's more like a table or rather an append-only log. You can't do a relationship mapping between a patient, doctor and illness.
Not really, #blockchain isn't a database. It's more like a table or rather an append-only log. You can't do a relationship mapping between a patient, doctor and illness.
Most #Blockchain projects/products are a solution looking for a problem except money.
I hope someday someone will be able to change that.
I hope someday someone will be able to change that.
