Health researchers require broad and comprehensive data sets in order to advance the understanding of disease, accelerate biomedical discovery, fast track the development of drugs and design customized individual treatment plans based on patient genetics, lifecycle and environment. The shared data environment provided by Blockchain would deliver a broad diverse data set by including patients from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds and from various geographical environments. As blockchain collects health data across a patient’s lifetime, it offers data ideal for longitudinal studies. A healthcare blockchain would expand the acquisition of health data to include data from populations of people who are currently under-served by the medical community or who do not typically participate in research. The shared data environment provided by Blockchain makes it easier to engage “hard-to-reach” populations and develop results more representative of the general public.
