ASX executive: Blockchain technology has great potential in the medical industry

A senior official of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) announced support for the application of blockchain in the medical field.

The GovInnovate Innovation Summit was held in Canberra, the capital of Australia yesterday. Tim Hogben, head of operations at the Australian Stock Exchange, expressed support for blockchain technology use cases at the meeting.

Hogben firmly believes that blockchain can improve the efficiency of medical data collection and verification.

He said:

Currently, all medical information is stored in multiple databases, which is not a secure way. Blockchain or ledger is the best way to obtain user information and provide instant verification services.

It’s worth noting that Hogben is not the first to suggest using distributed ledger technology for medical record storage and collection.

Researchers from the MIT Digital Currency Initiative recently published a report (download the full text of the report). The report introduces a technical prototype MedRec that is used to solve similar problems. As a blockchain medical record use case, MedRec is well-known in the blockchain community (although there are also many opponents).

Hogben’s remarks on behalf of the Australian Stock Exchange are significant as the agency is developing an efficient blockchain-based equities clearing and settlement platform.

Digital Asset Holdings (DAH), led by Blythe Masters, has received support from many of the world's top financial institutions, including the Australian Stock Exchange, which has publicly expressed its interest in investing in blockchain projects and believes in the potential of the technology.

However, modernizing the process of sharing and tracking medical records is difficult because medical records around the world are managed by different institutions in different regions, and each institution has its own unique way of uploading and storing data.

There have been many projects aimed at creating a unified system before, but most of them have failed. For example, the UK once tried to modernize and centralize its national health service (NHS), but the project eventually became a "bottomless pit" due to the increasing funding required, and the government lost nearly 10 billion pounds, and the project was abandoned.