Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JumpCrisscross 2985 days ago
> What happens when you leave that company? New company has to go through the same laborious process.

I like how de-centralisation is a pro until it's versus centralization on a blockchain.

TL; DR If everyone can agree on a single blockchain, everyone can agree on a single data format. That data format agreement is faster, more adaptable, more extensible and more resilient (in not requiring users to keep private keys) than a blockchain.

Screaming blockchain at everything is a new twist on an old mistake: thinking political problems have technical solutions.

> hate if you will

Discarding reasonable criticism as hate is immature. So is arguing "if you think X is not important, you're fooling yourself."

1 comments

> TL; DR If everyone can agree on a single blockchain, everyone can agree on a single data format. That data format agreement is faster, more adaptable, more extensible and more resilient (in not requiring users to keep private keys) than a blockchain.

Exactly. If you're looking for a model of personal medical data ownership, DNS would be better.

Various companies that hold your data (registars) and allow you to share with the appropriate parties (zone files), or delegate that ability if you so choose (name servers). If you want to transfer that data to another company, you can (domain transfer).

Furthermore, I question the assumption that immutability is entirely useful for medical records.

Immutability is useful for medical records for accountability purposes, to prevent doctoring (no pun intended).
If you start from a place of distrusting your medical professional, now you need a way of uniquely identifying them in a way that can tie back to them for accountability purposes. So we've introduced some kind of notarized identity service.

Furthermore, doctors are only going to read the most recent entry for any given data point: doctors won't read the entire file, especially in emergency situations.

Just because the status quo and doctor's behaviour is currently a certain way, doesn't mean it's the right way. The efficiency lacking in our health-"care" systems is astonishing - there needs to be self-regulation mechanisms and accountability.

Emergency situations is an orange if everything else is an apple, so of course there can be protocol and acceptable boundaries for each.

Humans are humans, mistakes can happen - especially that we aren't aware we're making, and therefore bound to make them again. Accountability will lead to necessary learning and improvement.

What if the data is wrong?
You append a correction, it's the same process as an edit.
So, use git?
What if say you bribe someone who can somehow get access to the files and modify them?