Research | Blockchain opens a new chapter in health

On March 20th, "Chain Talk" was fortunate to invite Researcher Chen Shenghua of Huobi Blockchain Application Research Institute to share a lot of problems in the current medical field and how to effectively solve the problem with blockchain technology.

Here's what to share:

Chen Shenghua: Hello everyone, I am Chen Shenghua, a researcher at Huobi Research Institute. I am very happy to cooperate with the chain community today to share with you the theme of "Blockchain opens a new chapter in medical and health" in this way.

I did not expect that the start of 2020 will be so difficult. Not only the epidemic situation, but even the entire capital market is now very weak. The epidemic situation on our side in China has been effectively controlled under the guidance of the government. But now they are still struggling in the United States, Britain, and Italy abroad. I believe you have seen it recently. This time, just in combination with the epidemic situation, I will share with you how the blockchain can function in the medical and health field.

• Solana completes Dutch auction, raises $ 1.76 million
• Blockchain application goes to the next city Shanghai court pilots blockchain technology
• How to invest in half? Where do companies go public? Where is the capital? Blockchain First Trader Decrypts For You | Babbitt Industry Lesson

Our content today focuses on the following parts. First, let's take a brief look at the industry development of the medical and health market and its composition. Second, in the current medical industry environment in China, what are the pain points or problems of the industry that have not yet been resolved? Thirdly, how the blockchain solves the pain points in the current medical and health industry; Fourthly, we will combine the epidemic situation to see how the blockchain can help the society to fight this battle. Finally, we will briefly discuss later The challenges faced by blockchain technology in the application process, and future prospects.

Let's take a direct look at the overall overview of the medical and health industry.

The medical industry is actually very complicated, involving a wide range of industries and a long industrial chain. The medical industry's industrial chain includes medical services, pharmaceutical manufacturing, medical devices, health supplies, health food, medical insurance, and more. With the increasing demand of residents for old-age care and health management, people's spending on old-age care and medical care will increase in the future. The medical and health industry is undoubtedly one of the largest and fastest-growing industries in China.

According to Frost & Sullivan, China's total health expenditure in 2018 reached 5.8 trillion yuan, accounting for 6.4% of GDP, and the compound annual growth rate of health expenditure in 2015-2018 reached 13.0%. Among developed countries, the total US health expenditure accounted for 17.1% of GDP in 2016, while Japan's total health expenditure accounted for 10.9% of total GDP in the same period. It can be seen that although there is still a certain gap between China's expenditure on health expenditure and developed countries However, this gap is gradually narrowing as the ratio of total health expenditure to GDP continues to rise throughout the year.

Next, look at the market space of the entire industry. According to Frost & Sullivan data, the scale of China's big health industry in 2018 reached 11 trillion yuan, 1.8 times that of 6 trillion yuan in 2013, and a compound growth rate from 2013 to 2018. Up to 12.7%. Frost & Sullivan predicts that the total size of China's big health market will reach more than 12 trillion yuan in 2019, and it will grow to 17 trillion yuan in 2022. The industry has huge room for development, and it is a trillion-dollar super market. Industry itself is a rigid need for the development of human society.

Next, let's take a look at the basic composition of the entire medical industry. Looking at the entire medical and health industry, it is essentially composed of many large vertical segments, including medical services, medical devices, medical informatization, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and insurance. Large sections, each vertical subdivided field involves many links, and their relationships are complex.

You can look at the light blue modules in the picture, which mainly include medical services, pharmaceutical manufacturing sales, and insurance, which are closer to people's livelihood. The contradictions in the medical industry that we see are mainly concentrated here.

With the development of Internet technology, the informatization and digital transformation of the traditional medical industry have been mostly completed, and various business models of "Internet + Medical" have also matured and entered a stage of steady development. For example, Internet medical platforms such as Ping An Good Doctor and Wei Yi make the process of seeking medical consultation, registration, and reimbursement payment more convenient and flat, and also solve some problems of information asymmetry. However, there are still many problems or sticking points in the medical industry. It should be pointed out that some of these problems, from the perspective of consumers or the masses, we only see the appearance. These problems are essentially due to the particularity of the medical industry itself, so there are many misunderstandings.

Below, we continue to take the three sectors of medical services, pharmaceutical manufacturing and medical health insurance as examples, and briefly explain some of the pain points or cruxes currently facing the medical industry.

First, the medical information is not smooth, resulting in a poor medical experience . In fact, the difficulty of getting medical treatment and seeing a doctor is something that our society has been criticized for a long time, and it is quite controversial. Originally, medical resources were in short supply, coupled with improper scheduling and management, which made most people find it difficult to seek medical treatment. Let me give you an example. Students who have been referred because of the illness must remember this kind of thing: I have obviously done CT and blood tests in Hospital A. Why did the doctor refer to Hospital B again? Let me do the same check? I have to wait in line and waste money for the inspection. Can I not see the inspection I performed in the A hospital before the B hospital?

This is one of the misconceptions I just talked about. In fact, as early as 2012, the country began to implement health card information integration. In 2012, the Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China issued the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Deepening the Reform of the Medical and Health System", which put forward corresponding requirements for the implementation of information projects such as electronic medical records and resident health cards, and pointed out that the issue of resident health cards is a medical informatization project Construction focus. The resident's health card of the Ministry of Health integrates the functions of social security card, New Rural Cooperative Card, and medical institution visit card. It aims to achieve convenient cross-region medical consultation, reimbursement and settlement across the country, and record all medical information of an individual's life.

Why can't I see hospital B integrated? In fact, it is not impossible to see that most of the hospitals in the province or between provinces, under the promotion of the national medical reform, the information construction has been done well, and most hospitals have already achieved data interconnection and interconnection. What is the reason for the above-mentioned crux? The main reason is that the medical data standards are not uniform across the country, and there are also differences between hospitals in Class A and Class A hospitals. At the same time, the level of doctors and the standards of medical devices are different between hospitals. In addition, patients will still be screened again in accordance with hospital standards. Therefore, it is not that the data is not available in the hospital, but that the special nature of the medical service industry has led to the need for secondary screening. The public is not clear about the logic and feels they have been pitted.

In addition, at the data level, the privacy of patient medical data appears to be particularly important. From the legal and privacy level of user data, medical data has certain characteristics compared to data from other industries, especially data related to genetics and other fields. More sensitive. In 2017, China promulgated the "Cyber ​​Security Law of the People's Republic of China", which stipulates that operating agencies should keep user data securely in their own hands to prevent data leakage. Correspondingly in the medical field, it means that medical institutions should keep patient data strictly confidential. Therefore, most medical institutions cannot easily and publicly disclose medical information, which leads to unsmooth medical information circulation, and each medical institution has formed an island of data.

Although most of the regions have realized the interconnection of rural medical institutions and municipal hospitals in the province to provide a convenient cross-hospital medical experience, there are still hospitals with different levels of standards in some regions that do not share medical examination results and data with community health centers. 3. The phenomenon of unequal medical information still exists, and the patient's medical experience is poor.

Second, the lack of trust relationship creates conflicts between doctors and patients . Although Internet platforms on the market, such as Weiyi and Ping An Good Doctor, can alleviate the information asymmetry in the process of seeking a doctor to a certain extent and flatten the process of seeking a doctor, the medical service itself has a high degree of information asymmetry. The scarcity of medical resources also exacerbates this asymmetry. The medical data of patients in medical institutions may also be entered incorrectly or tampered with by attacks. At the same time, the Internet is also full of false information. The quality of doctors and related personnel is uneven. It is difficult for patients as consumers to discern the authenticity of information. There is a possibility of fraud. The interests of patients are more serious or will endanger the lives of patients. Too many negative cases have occurred in the past, causing trust issues between medical institutions and patients, and frequent medical incidents caused by doctor-patient conflicts. The lack or distortion of medical data behind the dispute also makes it difficult to obtain evidence during legal accountability.

In addition, it is also a matter of data privacy. Medical institutions have substantial control over users' medical data, ranging from personal medical examination data to highly confidential genetic data. Medical institutions may use patient data for commercial purposes. Get economic benefits from it. In addition, most medical institutions collect user data into a database and upload it to the cloud during the business process. Because medical institutions do not know the ROOT of the cloud database and have limited control over data security, such behavior is essentially illegal. Patients face personal data breaches and privacy challenges.

Third, the scattered and lost clinical data is not conducive to drug development . Above we introduced the CRO contract research and development service, which is the clinical trial of the drug. The clinical and test data are very important for the drug development stage. However, because clinical data involves patient privacy and the data sources are scattered, about half of the clinical trial data has not been made public. Clinicians and managers face difficulties in integrating and analyzing data. The lack of data will not be conducive to drug research and development, and will increase the cost of drug research and development to a certain extent, leading to the extension of the entire drug development cycle.

Fourth, it is difficult to eradicate the manufacture and sale of fake and inferior medicines . Counterfeit medicines are medicines with incorrect dosages, false or wrong ingredients, and at the same time, due to improper storage and other problems, the quality of the medicines may be unqualified. According to a WHO (World Health Organization) survey of low- and middle-income developing countries, more than 48,000 sample drugs were examined, and it was concluded that 1 out of 10 drugs sold on the market in developing countries was counterfeit or Inferior medicine. Drug sales in these countries can reach $ 300 billion per year, indicating that trade in counterfeit drugs in these developing countries is as high as $ 30 billion. Similarly, in recent years, some large-scale cases of manufacturing and selling fake and inferior medicines have been detected and detected in our country, which have caused a great negative impact on society.

Due to the lack of a proper tracking mechanism, there are some irregularities in the drug supply chain from manufacturing, distribution, storage to sales. For example, pharmaceutical sales outlets do not have the business qualifications, and the standards for storage of drugs or vaccines are not up to standard. The advent of medicine. The production and sale of counterfeit and inferior drugs not only endanger the lives and property of patients who use drugs, but also infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of regular drug manufacturers.

Fifth, the insurance claims process is lengthy and inefficient . We also just mentioned that because of the data silos between institutions. Patients' health status, medical treatment data, and disease history are scattered among various medical institutions. There is a problem of information asymmetry between medical insurance companies and medical institutions, which leads to the independence of insurance companies and medical institutions. A lot of key information cannot be shared. In the process of insurance application, claim and reimbursement, many supporting materials need to be provided, and insurance companies also need to manually check and verify the submitted supporting materials. On the one hand, each link is extremely time-consuming, resulting in inefficient overall processes and poor experience for insured patients; on the other hand, it also increases the labor costs of insurance companies.

Sixth, fraud and injustice in insurance . Patient data is scattered and cannot be traced to the source. On the one hand, there may be untrue data, so that interested people can use this data to deceive insurance and harm the interests of the insured company. Customized insurance policies have caused unfair premiums for policyholders and harmed the interests of policyholders.

I believe that friends also have a certain understanding of the blockchain. The blockchain is distributed, immutable, highly transparent, and traceable. Based on the characteristics of the blockchain, the fields in which the blockchain can be applied are also very Extensive, including logistics, finance, public welfare, copyright and so on. And the medical treatment we are talking about today is just a segmented vertical field that blockchain technology can apply.

Next, we follow the above thinking and discuss what role blockchain can play in the medical field we just talked about, and how it can solve the above problems.

First, the patient data is uploaded to the chain to open the flow of information and optimize the medical experience;

In medical diagnosis, an electronic medical record database is constructed through blockchain technology, and information such as the patient's health status, family medical history, and medication history are recorded on the blockchain. Combined with data encryption, patient related information and data are protected to ensure patient privacy. Not violated. Through the data sharing on the blockchain platform, these data can be transferred between medical institutions at a larger scale and at different levels. Doctors and nursing staff can read the patient's data within the authority, grasp the patient's health status, and prescribe the right medicine. Patients may no longer need to perform repeated inspections on the same diagnostic item, because these data can be traced back to which doctor and equipment of the previous hospital, which solves the problem of responsibility attribution and greatly improves the patient's medical experience.

Second, improve the efficiency of medical health insurance claims and improve the experience of policyholders;

The patient's medical records, disease history, medication history, etc. are recorded on the blockchain. Through the blockchain platform, insurance companies can open up data gaps with patients, medical institutions, etc., and improve the transparency of the insurance claim process. The verification system can complete eligibility for insurance claims in a short period of time. At the same time, the tamper-proofing of the blockchain gives the data a higher degree of credibility, which also reduces the hassle of providing claim materials and proofs for the policyholder, without having to go through a lengthy reimbursement procedure. In the future, key node information such as the signing of insurance contracts, changes in related data, review of claims data, and payment receipts and payments can be chained to ensure the credibility of the data and facilitate parties to conduct on-chain inspection and verification at any time, which improves the process. Transparency and controllability. Even after combining the smart contract of the blockchain, automatic medical claims can be realized in the future. At the same time as paying for medical treatment, the claims for commercial medical insurance are completed simultaneously, improving the user experience of the insured.

Third, reduce insurance fraud and ensure fairness and justice in insurance;

The relevant information stored by the patient on the blockchain is true and accurate and cannot be tampered with, in fact, it effectively prevents the occurrence of insurance fraud cases. All insurance institutions can even conduct reasonable data sharing among their peers to effectively detect and eliminate insurance fraud. Insurance companies can also customize policies for different policyholders through more authentic data. The policyholders no longer need to exploit the average probability calculated by the actuary, and do not have to pay for high premiums affected by other people's data. fair.

Fourth, the circulation of clinical data to help drug development;

As mentioned earlier, most clinical data is scattered across institutions and is not easy to collect. Through the blockchain data platform, drug research and development institutions can conditionally obtain clinical data that was not easily disclosed in the past and is extremely decentralized, effectively reducing the threshold for research data acquisition, and the quality and quantity of clinical data have been improved, which is conducive to drugs. Development process. On the other hand, patients can also use their own data through authorized institutions in exchange for related benefits, which are mutually beneficial.

During the circulation of the above medical data, because the patient's related information data is encrypted on the blockchain, the third party calling the data needs to obtain the patient's private key authorization. Blockchain technology can help establish a data sharing platform, which can strictly control the acquisition and use of data, to a large extent avoid the commercialization of patient data and protect the patient's data privacy.

Fifth, establish a trust mechanism to resolve the contradiction between doctors and patients;

The blockchain not only records the patient's data on the chain, but also records the relevant information of medical institutions and medical personnel. Patients can check the data on the chain to examine the professional qualifications of medical institutions and personnel, whether there is false exaggeration. To alleviate the trust problem caused by information asymmetry, to avoid these false information and false advertisements to mislead patients, to avoid the occurrence of medical fraud to the greatest extent, reduce the cost of patient selection, and to ensure the safety of patients' personal and property.

At the same time, patients can also understand the medical staff's operation records through on-chain data after the consultation, and monitor doctors for cases of random and multiple prescriptions. When medical disputes occur, the data recorded on the blockchain is legal accountability Provides the source of evidence, which not only protects the legitimate rights and interests of patients, but also relieves doctors from the "medical trouble" to a certain extent. Establishing a traceable and immutable data platform through the blockchain, so that both doctors and patients can rely on law and evidence to resolve conflicts and disputes, and the medical and patient contradictions in the society today are expected to be eased.

Sixth, trace the source of the drug supply chain and circulation to achieve counterfeiting and inferiority;

Although the current “Good Manufacturing Practices” (GSP) and “Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)” have implemented strong and effective regulations and supervision on many aspects of pharmaceutical production, transportation, storage, and sales, due to differences There is no universal collaboration platform between the collaboration nodes to integrate the data of all parties, and complete the data chain closed loop of the entire drug supply chain. There are blind spots in collaboration between the collaboration nodes, and business collaboration is mostly based on offline paper receipts for interaction and manual operation. Inefficient and error-prone. Non-compliant fake and inferior drugs are very likely to infiltrate the drug supply chain through this collaboration blind spot. In addition, if there is a collaboration platform and centralized platform of the drug supply chain, the data may also be tampered with, which still provides the possibility of the penetration of counterfeit and inferior drugs.

Based on the traceability of blockchain data, blockchain technology can be used to transparentize the drug supply chain and trace the traceability of drugs on the market. From the acquisition of pharmaceutical raw materials to the production, manufacture, storage, distribution and sales of drugs, appropriate monitoring and tracking are performed. Consumers can use the blockchain platform to see whether the manufacturers, date data, and circulation links of the medicines they purchased meet the standards. They can also use the blockchain technology to cooperate with the Internet of Things to measure the storage temperature and storage time of drugs or vaccines. real time monitoring. To ensure the authenticity, quality and safety of medicines, based on the original strong supervision of GSP and GMP, to further achieve open supervision and tracking, crack down on the market for counterfeit and inferior drugs, and protect the rights and interests of all parties.

Next we look at two practical application cases of blockchain in the medical field;

The first is an attempt by Ali Health on the blockchain . As early as a few years ago, Ali began to try the layout of the blockchain field, whether it is Ant Financial or other entities under its umbrella. On August 17, 2017, Ali Health announced the cooperation with Changzhou to launch a pilot project of "Medical Federation + Blockchain", applying blockchain technology to the underlying technical architecture system of Changzhou Medical Federation to help solve long-term "Islands of information" and data privacy issues that plague medical institutions.

This plan has been implemented in Changzhou Wujin Hospital and Zhenglu Town Health Center, and it will be gradually advanced to all third-level hospitals and grass-roots hospitals in Tianning District of Changzhou, and a comprehensive medical information network will be deployed.

Alibaba Health set up multiple data security barriers in the blockchain project. First, the data in the blockchain is encrypted. Even if the data is leaked or stolen, it cannot be decrypted. Secondly, it also stipulates the access and operation rights of Changzhou Medical Union's lower and upper hospitals and government management departments. The call of data requires the authorization of the blockchain to protect the patient's data privacy. Finally, the audit unit can use the blockchain's tamper-resistant and traceable technical characteristics to fully understand the flow of medically sensitive data.

With the introduction of Ali Health's blockchain technology, medical data can be interconnected within the medical union, optimizing the experience of doctors and patients, and ensuring the implementation of hierarchical diagnosis and two-way referrals. Through the blockchain network, community residents can own the ownership of health data, and through authorization, the data can be transferred between the community and the hospital. Doctors at all levels in the medical federation can obtain medical information of patients under authorization. Knowing the patient's past medical history and related information, the patient does not need to do repeated examinations, reducing the money and time paid for this.

Blockchain technology realizes the information interconnection between hospitals, which is in line with the government's guideline of "let data walk more and people only go once", but the application of such technology will reduce the number of patient examinations and correspondingly reduce the hospital's income. As well as reducing personnel costs, the interests of relevant parties may be violated. Therefore, the application of such technology requires the government to take the lead in piloting it and implement it from top to bottom. It also needs to introduce new business models to encourage other hospitals to join the ecosystem so that the entire ecosystem can operate healthily and sustainably.

The other is JD Digital, a digital technology company owned by giant JD . It is actually the predecessor of JD Financial. Now JD Financial is wrapped under JD Digital. We also know that JD.com has always been the leading company in China in big data and logistics. That JD.com also launched the blockchain-based Zhizhen Chain medicine traceability platform, which provides intelligent vaccine management software and hardware solutions through this platform to ensure the transparent flow of information from the entire process of vaccine production, circulation to use. The data of vaccines are recorded and their sources are traced to ensure the quality and safety of vaccines, make terminal vaccination safer and protect the rights and interests of consumers.

In terms of specific product application scenarios, JD.com and Hisense Biomedical Cold Chain reached a cooperation, jointly launched a blockchain vaccine traceability solution product, and applied it to vaccination sites at all levels and cities. The blockchain can solve the disadvantages caused by the manual recording of current vaccine data, such as being easily tampered with and data lags, ensuring the authenticity and security of vaccine monitoring, and solving the problem of difficult vaccine traceability.

In the traditional vaccine circulation process, there are pain points such as multiple circulation links, opaque information, low terminal inventory management efficiency, and time-consuming labor statistics. Through the blockchain technology, JD.COM has opened up the information circulation of vaccines from production centers, cold chain logistics, disease centers, inoculation stations, etc., and can complete the final vaccination situation and respond to information feedback.

In addition, the intelligent freezer is applied to the terminal inoculation station. This intelligent freezer is an Internet of Things device, which mainly provides management functions such as vaccine access and storage, temperature control early warning, automatic inventory, out of stock warning, and retrospective scanning code. Through the digitalization of vaccine information combined with blockchain technology, the labor cost of the vaccination station is greatly reduced, and its work efficiency is improved.

Through this intelligent vaccine traceability management system, consumers can learn the true circulation information of the vaccination through their mobile phones when they are vaccinated, and they can receive feedback on the results of vaccination in a timely manner, which is more reliable.

In addition to the cooperation with Hisense Medical Cold Chain, JD.com's anti-counterfeiting traceability platform in the medical field is gradually expanding its influence. In early 2019, it reached in-depth cooperation with Yinchuan Internet Hospital to implement a regional blockchain vaccine traceability solution. Up to now, the program has helped the inoculation stations achieve intelligent management of a total of 14 types of second-class vaccines and a total of 1,089 vaccinations, escorting 827 safe vaccination for 517 residents, and the correct vaccination rate is 100%.

Due to time constraints, I ca n’t share other classic cases with you in the course. In fact, there are already a lot of application cases of blockchain + medical treatment at home and abroad. Everyone is gradually trying to find out in this field. Medical services go to a higher level.

Above we have explained how the blockchain can solve the problems in the medical field. In fact, the application of the blockchain in the medical field is much more than that. What we have discussed is only the current prominent contradictions. This year's Spring Festival, everyone was also worried by the epidemic situation of the new coronavirus. In the process of epidemic prevention, a lot of problems were also exposed. I believe everyone must also know that too many things happened during the Spring Festival. Various news Flying all over the sky, everyone's circle of friends must have exploded, and you can't finish eating melon every day. The sudden epidemic has caused a mess in China and the world. Although all parties in the society have invested a lot of energy and resources in epidemic prevention, it is undeniable that this epidemic has caused significant social and economic problems in China and the world. influences.

We need to sort out the problems exposed in this epidemic, and how can the blockchain solve these various problems?

First, there is something worth thinking about. Why was there no emergency warning before the outbreak? Does our country have such a system? In fact, it does.

After experiencing SARS in 2003, China has achieved rapid development in terms of medical and health conditions, medical infrastructure and informatization level, and the automated early warning and epidemic prevention of infectious diseases have reached the international advanced level. In April 2008, our country launched the national automatic warning system for infectious diseases, established an automatic warning and response mechanism in 31 provinces (municipalities, autonomous regions), and realized the monitoring and identification of 39 infectious diseases and the distribution of early warning. Real-time tracking with response results, and this system is currently in the advanced position in the world. In addition to this system, China has also successively built a national infectious disease report information management system and a national infectious disease network direct reporting system (NNDRS) to achieve real-time online tracking and reporting of infectious disease cases across the country.

However, in the face of this coronavirus epidemic, these systems are like guns “mute fire”. They did not play a key role in early warning of the epidemic at a critical time before the outbreak of the epidemic, and missed the golden period of epidemic prevention. The rapid outbreak in a short period of time caused great obstacles to epidemic prevention.

Let's take a look at this picture and briefly introduce that this system collects standardized data such as electronic health records and electronic medical records from the hospital HIS system, and passes the district, county, city, provincial, and national level publicly. After the health data exchange platform supplemented the data format and completeness, the National Infectious Diseases Network Direct Reporting System (NNDRS) was finally collected, and the data of 39 infectious diseases were monitored and analyzed in the NNDRS system, and the hospital and CDC were alerted.

The infectious disease report card completed by the doctors at the grassroots hospitals is uploaded to the upper levels and advanced step by step. However, although this system has a complete and meticulous process architecture, the following serious hidden dangers still exist, which ultimately led to the system's inability to respond in time to this major emergency.

(1) The infectious disease report card only judges the known types of infectious diseases and triggers early warning, while the reporting of new infectious diseases requires repeated verification and confirmation, and the reporting confirmation period is long.

(2) In the process of reporting the infectious disease report card to the national infectious disease network direct reporting system, it needs to undergo 3 manual approvals, which are the in-hospital health insurance doctor's review, the district / county disease control center review, and the city-level disease control center review. . The original intention of adopting multi-level audit is to ensure the completeness and accuracy of the reported data. However, the process involving manual review is too lengthy to prevent the detection of outbreaks.

(3) The infectious disease reporting process lacks transparency. Due to the lack of an effective data sharing mechanism between hospitals, it is not possible to compare the data of patients with the same symptoms. The infectious disease report card can only be passed upwards and vertically, failing to achieve horizontal information sharing. The early warning system failed to achieve a spider web deployment and was inefficient.

For various reasons, the NNDRS system failed to respond in a timely manner before the outbreak of the epidemic, which increased the difficulty of epidemic prevention.

What can the blockchain do in this? By combining the original old system with blockchain technology and deploying the traditional serial infectious disease reporting and early warning system as a point-to-point multi-centralized system, it may be able to achieve the purpose of streamlining processes and improving efficiency. Specifically, just like this picture, the "data island" phenomenon between medical institutions can be opened up by building a four-in-one blockchain prevention chain of "district, city, province, and country" to establish a hospital and local CDC Distributed, point-to-point infectious disease data sharing network, real-time synchronization and exchange of multi-point data in multiple districts and multiple hospitals, and cross-hospital and inter-agency cross-validation of data on the chain to ensure the authenticity of reported infectious disease data To provide front-line medical workers with dynamic awareness of the epidemic, it can play an early warning function in the early stages of an epidemic.

At the same time, based on the blockchain, a tamper-resistant and highly transparent reporting data storage mechanism is established to prevent data tampering and concealment. The public can learn the real data of confirmed cases, suspected cases and deaths on the chain. Relying on the traceability of blockchain data, we will make retrospective accountability for major acts of negligence in the epidemic, strengthen the government's credibility, and provide a solid foundation for preventing and controlling the epidemic.

Second, the source of the disease is difficult to track and the population is difficult to investigate. Because the coronavirus is extremely contagious, people who have had close contact with the source of the virus have the potential risk of infection. Tracking the case's itinerary can effectively find potential risk groups, help cut off the path of infection, and prevent the epidemic from spreading further. However, in the actual investigation, as the passenger itinerary data of transportation departments such as airplanes, trains, and buses are scattered among various companies and departments, only the relevant national departments can uniformly review and match the passenger itinerary data. Understanding the physical whereabouts of the cases, and then reporting the potential risk groups one by one, the overall process is inefficient, not to mention that some cases are not reported or misreported, which will interfere with epidemic prevention.

If we say that the underlying blockchain platform is deployed in multiple transportation departments such as airplanes, trains, and inter-city buses, it integrates passenger identification information and areas to trace the source of the disease, and understand the dynamics of people who have contacted the source in real time. And automatic notification through smart contracts to make the investigation more accurate and efficient, cut off the source of infection in a timely manner, and effectively curb the further expansion of the epidemic. At the same time, the blockchain can also protect data privacy and leak passenger information.

Third, the management of materials is chaotic and medical resources are difficult to find. Coronavirus is mainly transmitted through droplets, that is, coughing, sneezing and other actions to spread germs, so masks have become a great weapon to prevent virus-borne infections. Beginning on January 20, masks have become a scarce resource. The whole country has begun to rush for masks. Masks have instantly become a kind of hard currency. Online hype about masks is also increasing. With the sharp rise in pneumonia infection cases and the rapid increase in medical demand, medical resources in Wuhan and other regions are in short supply, and most hospitals are experiencing emergency supplies of masks, disposable protective clothing, protective glasses, and medicine bottles. All sectors of the country have deployed medical supplies from all over the world to help alleviate the tension of medical resources in epidemic areas.

However, the emergence of the epidemic situation has put the management of medical supplies into a mess. The hospital's material deployment methods are backward. It may be difficult to achieve precise management through excel and manual calculations. The hospital's mastery of material inventory and consumption exists. Great loopholes, material deployment cannot keep up with sharply rising medical needs, and hospital material requirements cannot be accurately and timely communicated to decision makers. There is a large number of stalls in the middle of allotment, transfer, and reception, plus the epidemic situation. In order to control the palpitations of the predecessors, the overall medical material distribution process is chaotic and inefficient, which undoubtedly worsens the medical institutions that are already in urgent need of medical resources.

Fourth, the public opinion is spreading out of the fact that the epidemic is not true, affecting social security and stability. Throughout the entire epidemic, various media channels such as WeChat on mobile phones, circles of friends, and Weibo circulated various news. Is it true or false? do not know. The masses are always concerned about the development of the current epidemic situation. How many people have been infected? Will it be passed down from person to person? Are bats the source of the virus? What type of mask should I use? Can Shuanghuanglian prevent the virus? Anxious people have countless doubts. At the same time, people also have distrust of the data released by the hospital, which has led to many online rumors, various authentic and false news, science popularization and videos on online platforms such as WeChat. Due to the current lack of a complete and reliable epidemic data release system, in this special period, these online public opinions may cause panic among the people, negatively affect the epidemic prevention work, and even affect social security and stability.

The significance of the blockchain in this matter is that in order to ensure the synchronization of information between the official and the society, the confirmed cases, suspected cases and death data on the epidemic prevention chain can be disclosed in real time, and the authenticity of the data is guaranteed through the blockchain. The whole society can keep abreast of the true development of the current epidemic situation. At the same time, in controlling the spread of misleading speech, the information and data submitted to the blockchain need to undergo cross-validation from multiple parties to ensure the authenticity of the data and curb the secondary transmission of false information. In addition, for false information that causes significant social impact, the data block is used to find the source of misleading information, implement severe punishment, and be permanently recorded in the blockchain blacklist. To the greatest extent, increase the cost of evildoers' spread, reduce the multiple transmission of false information on the Internet, thereby stabilizing the mood of the public and achieving social security and stability.

Fifth, the "black box operation" of non-profit organizations. During the Spring Festival or during the epidemic, there was a lot of enthusiasm. One of the topics discussed was the opacity of public welfare organizations and the operation of black boxes. Due to the emergence of medical resources in many parts of the country, the people of the whole country have settled into cities and have launched fund-raising operations, with money and money. Currently, Huobi Charity has donated 10 million yuan for rescue work in places with severe epidemics, and has donated more than 600,000 sets of protective materials to first-line hospitals. However, due to the opaque operation in the distribution of charitable funds, the materials that should have been distributed to designated hospitals have been artificially transferred to other places. Charitable funds have not been used exclusively and implemented, and the use of funds has not been transparent in real time. Disclosure, which triggered a crisis of trust in charities across society. Some people were even suspected of reselling donated materials and driving up prices. Some netizens even said, "Will you buy the masks you donate online." The various phenomena exposed in this outbreak of public welfare donations have actually caused a lot of Internet users across the country The crackdown is challenging the people's trust in public welfare institutions and people.

In the work of non-profit organizations, the most important thing is transparency and trust. Establish a set of open, transparent and traceable public welfare system through the distributed ledger of the blockchain, which records the donors, recipients and management information of charitable materials. Monitor it. For the distribution of charitable materials, the blockchain can realize the publicity of the number, number of times, objects, etc., and ensure that the materials are specifically used under the supervision and review of the public to achieve traceability. The distributed management of data on the chain can also ensure that the above-mentioned information is not tampered with, forged, true and transparent of fundraising and use of funds, and effectively eliminate inefficiencies and corruption in the process. On the basis of such trust, society will be more comfortable handing over charity funds to public welfare organizations.

Sixth, we must know that fake and shoddy medical resources have penetrated the market. Front-line medical workers are exposed to the dangerous environment that may cause virus infection for a long time. control. However, in the case of urgent medical resources, many medical supplies with substandard epidemic prevention standards have begun to appear on the market. Criminals have made "national hardship" by selling fake and inferior medical products and medicines, regardless of the safety of medical personnel and patients. . As masks become a scarce resource instantly, from the perspective of supply and demand, the shortage of supply will inevitably lead to an increase in prices. As far as I know, I bought 20 disposable masks at the beginning of the epidemic. Three disposable masks and five disposable masks began to appear. From the mask manufacturers to the numerous dealers on the market, the price was gradually increased by one hand, and there was even a fraud such as paying for it. However, when the life of the epidemic is so high, such price hikes actually have a serious impact on epidemic prevention and control.

Through the transparent and traceable characteristics of the blockchain, the entire process supervision of the medical resource supply chain can be realized. Suppliers, logistics, distribution channels, receivers, and other nodes jointly verify the material transfer process to ensure that no material transfers, fewer misses, etc. occur during the transfer process, to ensure that materials come from regular channels and meet epidemic prevention And related specifications to ensure the safety of medical staff and patients. At the same time, through the blockchain, trace and discover illegal persons who sell false and inferior materials and unreasonably drive up prices, and implement corresponding punishment measures.

After this epidemic, we Huobi China also launched Huobi China's urban public health platform based on its own technical advantages. This platform will take advantage of the advantages of blockchain technology and use the distributed network to build a traceable blockchain trusted network to meet major public health emergencies and daily urban medical and health needs. The platform will create application modules such as early warning of infectious diseases, retrospective control of epidemic transmission paths, material tracking and deployment, and information release according to different demand scenarios, to achieve goals such as rapid response, accurate prediction, real-time prevention and control, and efficient material deployment.

In the future, Huobi China will successively launch ten standardized product solutions, covering urban public health, supply chain finance, point management, and certificate management.

The embedding of blockchain technology has resolved many current pain points in the medical industry and has greatly improved the operating efficiency of the medical system. Speaking of which, there may be confusion among the audience. Is the blockchain really so versatile? Indeed, blockchain is not a panacea. In the actual application process, especially in the medical field, there will still be many difficulties. The "blockchain + medical" model innovation is indeed facing many challenges in the development process because of the particularity of the medical industry.

As for the particularity of the medical industry, I will mention this later. So what problems do you face? Let me expand on that.

First, medical data standards are not uniform, and information collection and circulation will be blocked;

What does that mean? At present, China's medical and health data mainly includes three parts: hospital clinical data, public health data, and mobile medical health data. Over time, the amount of data in the medical and health field has exploded. First, these data are often extremely fragmented and complex, making them difficult to collect systematically. Secondly, the amount of data processing is not only huge, but also some data is difficult to classify and lack of classification registration. Valuable data such as patient medication, clinical diagnostic data, and imaging data are scarce. With many problems and large amount of data, data storage on the current blockchain may be difficult to load and difficult to form a complete portrait of the patient. What is most worth discussing is the particularity of the medical industry just mentioned. This industry involves many stakeholders and related policies, and it is related to the safety of people's lives and property. It belongs to a highly regulated area. In addition, coupled with the complexity of the benefit chain, there are large differences in different regions of our country, leading to inconsistent product standards and inconsistent service specifications. The lack of unified data standards between different medical systems has become a major obstacle to the application of medical data in China problem.

This isolated and non-standardized information severely limits the potential value that medical big data can represent, and the efficiency of the medical and health industry cannot be improved.

Using blockchain technology, medical data is stored on the blockchain for interoperability and sharing. Data distributed by node verification can only ensure that the data on the chain is authentic and not tampered with. However, scattered and heterogeneous data at the source will not be conducive to the collection and circulation of medical information by the blockchain; inconsistent data standards will negatively affect the quality of the data set and limit the value of the blockchain's empowerment to the healthcare industry; in addition, intelligence Contracts are also difficult to classify and discriminate this type of data, because the data itself is messy. Links that need to be embedded in smart contracts, such as automated claims, will face difficulties.

The current problem of inconsistent medical data standards still needs to be reformed and promoted by national medical insurance units, pushing for standardization in the quality, standards, and dimensions of medical data, and accelerating the formation of a unified national medical standardization system. In this way, the blockchain can play a maximum role, otherwise it can only be tried in a small range.

Second, it is difficult to connect the medical federations, and data silos still exist;

China has a vast territory, and large and small public hospitals and private hospitals are scattered throughout the country. The application of blockchain technology in the field of medical and health is usually carried out in the form of alliance chain, and medical institutions share medical data through the alliance chain. However, due to the regional decentralization of hospitals, multiple medical consortia linked by alliances will form on the market. Each major medical consortium hopes to establish its own medical system as a national industry standard, and has the initiative and the right to speak. Due to administrative issues, operational coordination issues or conflicts of interests between medical consortia, It is difficult to cooperate and form alliances, and there is no organization or mechanism for a cooperative system between medical associations. As a result, information and data between medical institutions can only be circulated within the medical associations, and the data of medical associations It is difficult to form intersections between sets.

The blockchain can indeed solve the "data island" problem in the medical system to a certain extent, but it only allows the scattered islands to aggregate into a "larger island". Although the current cross-chain technology can solve the problem of data exchange between alliance chains, due to the above-mentioned reasons, it is difficult to achieve the national medical system data circulation through the blockchain.

We believe that the current blockchain is facing two major problems in the medical field. Other problems may be that the connection with insurance institutions, payment and other entities in the data interface must also gradually run in.

From the current problems in the medical field to how to solve the problem with the blockchain, what kind of difficulties will we encounter in the process of solving them? Next, we will briefly summarize and look forward.

Over the past decades, China's medical and health undertakings have made remarkable progress. While significant progress has been made, the problems exposed by the current medical system are also increasing. The overall shortage of medical resources and the irrational allocation of resources have led to the inability of the medical system to meet the basic needs of the general public for medical and health care. The problems of difficult and expensive medical treatment have been criticized. The lagging medical and health undertakings have affected and restricted the harmonious development of Chinese society. One of the bottlenecks. In addition to insufficient medical resources, the inefficient operation of the medical system is also one of the main factors restricting China's medical cause. The emergence of blockchain technology and its application to the existing medical system can indeed promote the development of the medical industry.

However, due to the special nature of the medical industry, the blockchain does face difficulties in the application process. Therefore, the application of blockchain in various industries also requires specific analysis.

At present, the application of blockchain in the medical field is still dominated by the alliance chain. In the future, with the sharding mechanism, state channels, and zero-knowledge proof of public blockchains, the technical solutions of the public blockchains are gradually mature, the public blockchains may not lose in network performance. Give the alliance chain. At the same time, public chains are more attractive to undertake large-scale commercial applications in decentralized arrangements and token incentive mechanisms. But to achieve organic collaboration in all dimensions of society, multi-industry, and blockchain, there is still a long way to go. However, it must be known that the blockchain technology itself is also continuously developing. Each new technology has its specific scope of application, and it can be used to its fullest effect if it is properly applied.

For the future, we summarize the outlook of the following points.

First, the combination of blockchain and AI big data and the Internet of Things will promote the development of medical science and reconstruct the medical system;

Blockchain technology solves the dilemma of data silos and avoids the inconvenience caused by sensitive medical information in the past. In fact, the blockchain also has a pain point that the authenticity of the original data on the chain cannot be absolutely guaranteed, because one node is not excluded from collaborating with other nodes to counterfeit. Of course, compared to the previous model, the cost of this counterfeiting is relatively high. point. But in combination with the Internet of Things technology, this problem can be better solved. You must know that humans will do evil, but the machine will not. The machine measures how many degrees the vaccine is stored at room temperature, and how many kilograms is a few kilograms of goods. The data is uploaded to the chain. The real and effective data recorded on the blockchain is accumulated into a huge database of higher quality. Through AI, a large amount of high-quality medical big data, such as cases, images, genes, is repeatedly deep learning, algorithm optimization, and artificial intelligence is fed back. development of. While artificial intelligence is advancing the development of medical science, it also enables patients to enjoy standardized medical services no matter before, during, after, or inside and outside the hospital. Enabling the medical capabilities of head hospitals to the grassroots level, so that the grassroots hospitals can also share the medical technology of the head hospitals, and eventually evenly distribute medical resources at all levels to reconstruct the medical system.

Second, promote unified data standards and enable more efficient blockchain empowerment;

Because China's current medical information data standards are not unified, it is difficult to share medical information big data. A key step to promote the construction of medical information technology is to unify the data standards. In the future, with the advancement of medical reform by national medical insurance units, "cluttered" medical information data will gradually be standardized and unified, and will be accepted by many parties. After that, the blockchain will bring information to the medical industry. The effect will be greatly improved, and the efficiency of the industry will be further improved.

Third, regulators and industry associations may become the driving force for the construction of the major medical alliances;

After the multi-party medical alliance chain is gradually established and mature, in order to achieve greater collaboration, it is bound to further integrate. However, due to the different systems and interests of all parties, there will be many difficulties in the integration process, and the industry's regulatory agency or association will become the best role to promote integration.

Taking the hospital system as an example, the major medical consortia have difficulties in cooperating and aligning, resulting in the information and data between medical institutions can only be transferred within each medical consortium. If at this time, the hospital association with the right to speak the industry initiates alliance integration, proposes unified standards, and implements rectification from top to bottom, the hospital actively cooperates to build a large alliance chain across regions and systems to achieve a wider range of medical treatment. data sharing. After that, it opened up with other institutional systems such as insurance institutions, pharmaceutical manufacturers, etc., and promoted the circulation of data throughout the industry chain, eventually creating a complete medical blockchain data sharing platform.

In view of the particularity of the medical industry, promoting the integration of all parties in the industry will be an extremely long process. However, once this process is implemented, China's medical quality will make a qualitative leap, and increasing medical and health needs will be met.

That's it for my sharing. The content of this time is based on a series of reports on the blockchain industry application jointly released by Huobi Research Institute and Sullivan in January. "Blockchain opens a new chapter in medical and health". Friends can find the original report by visiting our website. There are also all the reports we have published in the past. You can also follow our Huobi China public account Huobi CN for more content at any time.

Moderator: Due to time, this is the end of our event today! Thank you very much Scott for all the wonderful sharing!

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!