Giving patients more control over their medical records is a goal of CMS, but the capability to engage patients in their own data goes even further with blockchain technology.

Blockchain technology, which is a digital ledger that records information about transactions, is already expected to have a major impact in the healthcare space, and the wearables sector, patient records and clinical trials could do with an injection of the technology, as well, writes Lucas Mearian for ComputerWorld.

In addition to typical health information, patients who use wearables and other tracking technology could consent to providing more information, such as exercise, sleep and diet data, that could give physicians more insight into overall health. Blockchain could help secure all this data, giving patients more control and engagement in their personal health record.

In its building blocks, blockchain technology is also a more secure platform for clinical trials, as the data is immutable and creates a trail for oversight.

A blockchain network of health information could also solve one of the biggest problems with EHRs. When they were built across proprietary softwares from different vendors and for different healthcare provides, EHRs continued to grow without being able to easily share information between providers or seamlessly integrate new data from new sources. This set up leaves valuable data unused and siloed. 

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