(Originally published in Healthcare Call Center Times in September 2020.)
AUSTIN, TX—Blockchain is certainly an odd word, one that didn’t really exist until about a decade ago. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, blockchain is defined as “a digital database containing information (such as records of financial transactions) that can be simultaneously used and shared within a large decentralized, publicly accessible network.”
In the beginning, its primary purpose was as a technology used in bitcoin and other virtual currencies. However, its use has expanded into other industries in recent years. It is just starting to emerge in healthcare, says Pete Harris, Austin Blockchain Collective’s Executive Director and Event Producer. (According to its website, the “Collective provides education, advice and guidance on blockchain and crypto technologies, and advocates for, showcases and nurtures local blockchain and crypto vendors and users. It connects, aligns and promotes ecosystem participants and encourages accelerated adoption of these transformative technologies.” Members of the Collective are companies with a permanent, full-time, business or technical presence in the Austin, Texas area.)
One reason why blockchain may make sense within healthcare “is because at its heart, it’s a data driven business,” he says. There is a lot of data, people and health records to maintain. An early use in the healthcare world has been in physician credentialing, he says, with at least two credentialing firms now using this technology. There may be potential within the healthcare call center world as well, but first it’s important to understand what blockchain technology can do.
“Multiple persons can maintain and update the database in a way that everyone agrees,” he says. “Blockchain keeps the data in a tamper proof format. Once data is added, it can’t be changed or if it is changed, everyone immediately knows that something has changed.”
He says that the tamper-proof characteristic of the blockchain makes this kind of specialized database an improvement over traditional databases. “One of the most likely uses for blockchain in call centers is to secure the data that they produce—such as call logs, call notes and digital recordings of calls,” Harris says. “In industries that are highly regulated or litigious in nature, blockchain technology can provide requisite proof that data has not been subsequently changed, through mistake, fraud or hacking. The same requirement to keep data tamper proof is found when managing patient healthcare data, such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs), or clinical trial results.”
There is also another angle at play here as automation has come into the healthcare call center world. “Call centers also increasingly leverage decision support systems that use artificial intelligence,” he says. “And AI driven customer service bots on websites are also in widespread use. In healthcare, call centers at payers (insurance companies) would use AI to guide an agent through what are often very complex processes that are subject to company policy, and both state and federal regulations. Where AI systems are trained using data collected from a wide range of sources, blockchain can secure that training data to ensure it is not the result of attempts to introduce bias into it.”