[langitbiru]

I think one of the values that blockchain can bring on the table in this context is convenience.

Passing data to a thumb drive or a piece of paper is a decentralized strategy but inconvenient one.

I imagine in the future, the doctor in Brazil writes your medical data into his/her local computer. You ask the data and show the QR code or public address in your mobile phone. The doctor sends your data to this QR code or public address. You store this data into the blockchain.

Next year, you go to Singapore and do some medical operation. You pass the data from the blockchain via your mobile phone to the doctor in Singapore.

I guess that is the selling point.

Can this be done with centralized approach? Of course. We can build a Paypal company but for medical records. The problem with that is some countries are reluctant to share the medical data with American company. They, I assume, will trust the algorithm which does not have the bias compared to an American company.

Paypal right now is not supported in Iran. I imagine this is one of the reasons doctors around the world would trust the blockchain compared to an American startup company.

[Edited] If we want to build a platform where Chinese and Americans can collaborate on sensitive data, blockchain could be the answer. You don't expect Chinese to trust an American startup company or vice versa. [/Edited]

This is my hypothesis.

[marcus_holmes]

You might want to do some actual research on non-US medical systems before investing your cash into this.

There are already several international standards on the interchange of medical records. There are some limits on requesting your own medical records (for apparently good reasons) but basically the system you describe already exists, minus the need for blockchain (which apparently is more "convenient" than a thumb drive... how?) outside the USA.

Also, the problem with Chinese-Americans collaborating on sensitive data is that they don't want to, not that they don't have a suitable format for data interchange.

Again, solution chasing problem... as always with blockchain...

[icebraining]

Why is the doctor sending your data to some public address shown on your phone, and not to your phone directly?

[slfnflctd]

My phone has zero reception at my doctor's office. It also runs out of space regularly, since manufacturers decided to screw consumers over by taking out SD card slots. There could be plenty of other reasons.

[icebraining]

Why do you need reception to transmit something from a computer to a phone in the same room?

As for out of space, that's a valid concern. But the blockchain itself can store almost nothing - a few bytes per transaction at most. So you'll have to store the data somewhere else anyway, and only point to it using the blockain. And therefore, the question returns: why not store that pointer in the phone itself?