Hyperledger launches blockchain healthcare working group to develop specific use cases for the US government

The Hyperledger project has announced the creation of a new working group on blockchain medical applications.

The working group was officially launched at the Distributed: Health blockchain conference in Tennessee yesterday. Its members include healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente, tech giant IBM, professional services firm Accenture, and startups Gem and Hashed Health.

Brian Behlendorf, executive director of the Hyperledger Project, said the initial task of the working group is to collect more than 70 blockchain medical proposals received by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS launched the "Blockchain Research Challenge for Health IT and Healthcare-Related Applications" in July to explore how blockchain technology can be applied to the healthcare field.

Behlendorf told CoinDesk:

The purpose of establishing this working group is to adopt some of the use cases of the HHS paper competition and apply blockchain to the medical system or use it as an auxiliary tool in the medical field.

Specific selected use cases include decentralized registration systems, interoperable networks and identity authentication, smart contracts and automated process management, etc.

According to a member of the working group, their ultimate goal is to select a specific project and have Hyperledger members write the software code and provide technical support.

Looking ahead

As for the future development of the working group, Behlendorf said that the startup Gem will be responsible for recruiting more companies to participate in the project, and participants will not be limited to Hyperledger members.

With HHS taking the lead on blockchain and healthcare, the working group aims to develop a blockchain healthcare use case as a foundational product for the open source organization.

Behlendorf said they hope to be ahead of various experts in the medical field and become leaders in blockchain and medical use cases.

Behlendorf said the working group not only represents Hyperledger’s commitment to transforming the healthcare sector, but also demonstrates that the Hyperledger project has applications beyond finance.

He concluded:

The Hyperledger project has always been committed to developing basic technologies for the development of blockchain, and the fields involved are by no means limited to the financial industry. Hyperledger is like an operating system, a database or a programming language, applicable to various fields.