Dock has been developing secure and scalable Verifiable Credential technology since 2017. BurstIQ implemented Dock’s Verifiable Credential technology to make their health data secure, portable, and verifiable. This shows three BurstIQ use cases that demonstrate the importance of Verifiable Credentials in blockchain and health care.
TL;DR
- There are many problems with patient data security and privacy in the health care industry
- Verifiable Credentials and blockchain technology play a key role in enabling patient privacy and securing health data.
- BurstIQ partnered with Dock to use Verifiable Credentials to turn any of their health data into a Verifiable Credential that is portable and secure. The data can be safely shared to recipients within and outside of their system.
- BurstIQ is transforming health data into Verifiable Credentials that are used for a variety of use cases including enabling individuals to own and control their data, verifying skills and experiences, and enhancing employee experiences.
Introduction
When it comes to patient privacy and security, health care providers face many challenges. One major problem is that their data is often held in siloed systems that are not interoperable. As a result, important health information can be scattered across multiple, disconnected repositories, making it difficult for doctors and other medical staff to access and use the data effectively. Also, these systems are often vulnerable to cyberattacks, putting patients' private information at risk of being stolen or compromised. Verifiable Credentials and blockchain are technology solutions that can play a key part in helping health data management systems ensure privacy and security.
BurstIQ is a company that provides blockchain-enabled data solutions for the health care industry. BurstIQ implemented Dock’s technology in order to turn any health data into a Verifiable Credential that is portable and secure while enabling their customers to respect users’ data privacy and data ownership rights. The company’s LifeGraph platform enables businesses to manage sensitive data while complying with people’s data rights and gives people ownership and control over their personal information.
How Is Blockchain Used In Health Care?
Blockchain technology is becoming increasingly popular in the health care industry. The secure and decentralized nature of blockchain makes it an excellent tool to enable the fast verification of health data, which is not stored on the blockchain itself. Patients store their own data. This health data can include everything from patient records to biometric information and genetic profiles. This innovative technology can be used to make it easier for health care providers and researchers to access the information they need while giving patients more control, ownership, and privacy of their data and how it is used.
Blockchain can help health care organizations streamline their operations by eliminating the need for manual verification of employee credentials and patient records. Blockchain enables users to easily create electronic records that are cryptographically protected from tampering or modification. The technology plays an important role in facilitating medical research, accelerating hiring processes, improving patient care, and ensuring the privacy of medical information.
How BurstIQ Makes Health Data Verifiable, Secure, and Portable With Dock’s Verifiable Credential Solutions
BurstIQ is a platform as a service that gives organizations the ability to build health apps, work apps, life apps, and data exchanges. Verifiable Credentials enable BurstIQ to manage LifeGraph data and securely share that data with any third party within and outside of their system in a way that can truly be trusted by the recipient. The recipients can see the signed and attested data.
Verifiable Credentials are a digital, cryptographically secured version of both paper and digital credentials that people can present to organizations that need them for verification. A LifeGraph is a digital expression about people’s, places, and things and how this data interacts with other people, places, and things. The data is turned into smart data that can be packaged up as Verifiable Credentials and shared with relevant parties within and outside of the LifeGraph system.
Dock’s Verifiable Credential technology solutions include our Certs API and Dock Certs platform which have advanced privacy preserving strategies. BurstIQ chose Dock over other providers because our Verifiable Credential technology was:
- Easy to use and integrate in their system
- Fast to deploy (within 2 months)
- Flexible
- Interoperable
- Scalable
When the Dock and BurstIQ leaders met, there was an immediate chemistry over the shared values and vision that Verifiable Credentials shouldn’t just capture singular events like a degree, but reflect a person’s lifelong learning journey and all the skills acquired along the way.
Below are a few use case examples that demonstrate how Verifiable Credentials are being used by BurstIQ.
Blockchain and Health Care Use Case #1: Individual Ownership and Control of Data
This is an example of how Clarinda, who is a nurse, uses applications powered by LifeGraph to easily manage and securely share her data.
- Clarinda logs into the system.
- Here is Clarinda’s homepage. She has many applications and services that she uses that are powered by LifeGraph.
- When we go to her core profile, it shows all of the data that Clarinda has in her LifeGraph, including her licenses and certifications.
- All of the data is signed, attested, and verified. When we click on a license, you can see that it was checked by a verification company.
- When you click on “SHOW PROOF,” you can see all of the signings and attestations of the data confirming that it hasn’t been altered and that it is trustworthy. BurstIQ manages trust by using blockchain technology to provide the mechanisms for that data to be verified by a trusted entity or system generating the data.
- Clarinda can securely share the data with an employer or someone else.
- You can see all the different types of data she can share from her profile. She can choose which parts she wants to share.
- Once she makes her selections, she can choose to package up the data as a verified credential or a PDF export, which is where Dock’s technology is applied. The verified credential will include the data and the third party verifications as a JSON file, which is a type of computer file that contains structured data.
It will be exported as a zip file on her local drive.
Blockchain and Health Care Case #2: Verifying Skills and Experiences
- BurstIQ used Dock’s technology to help the company Lifetrek develop their product. Lifetrek creates skill-based Verifiable Credentials that are shareable, signed, and trusted. Here are all of the verified credentials that Clarinda has acquired over the course of her career either on the job or through various types of training:
- Each skill is associated with a verified credential.
- If we click on her Written Communication VC to see more detail, you can see what level she has acquired in that skill and what she’s done to get there. She could download the VC in JSON to share with someone else’s wallet, an employer, or a prospective employer. She can do so with the privacy and security that’s inherent to LifeGraph.
The Importance of Properly Verifying Health Care Experience and Skills
When Dr. Charles needed to hire staff, she was not able to tell if candidates were really qualified for a role just by judging from their resumes and interviews. Many candidates often said they had the appropriate experience, but she only found out later while they were doing the job that they weren’t as qualified as they came across during the hiring process. The consequences of hiring an unqualified person could result in harmed patients.
She wishes that more employers, training institutions, and educational institutions were issuing Verifiable Credentials. If this happened, she would have more trust and confidence in a candidate’s abilities in the hiring process. If there were two candidates who had similar presentations in their resumes and interviews, she would hire the one with Verifiable Credentials.
Blockchain and Health Care Use Case #3: Enhancing Employee Experiences
Burnout is a major problem in the health care industry and turnover affects organizations’ ability to deliver health care. It is also very expensive to replace and retrain nurses. The average cost of turnover for a bedside nurse ranges from $28,000 to $51,000 USD and the scale of this turnover across the health care industry costs about 6.5 million USD per year.
To address this issue, BurstIQ is partnering with a major university to help develop personalized digital experiences for nurses by designing LifeGraphs for them. LifeGraphs give nurses full control of how their personal data is being used and they can share data however they feel is appropriate.
With Verifiable Credentials, health care organizations can develop insight about their staff to address the issues leading to burnout to improve retention, upskill the new generation of nurses, efficiently record their skills and experiences, and build more trustworthy employee experiences.
Where Dock Fits Into BurstIQ’s System
People build their apps on top of LifeGraph technology. Because their layer 1 is a BurstIQ product that interacts with other types of blockchains, including Dock, interoperability is important when the company works with a partner.
Dock’s integration enables BurstIQ to provide decentralized identities to any LifeGraph and decentralized identity becomes the foundation of the Verifiable Credentials they can produce for skills, employment records, and so on.
Conclusion
Verifiable Credentials and blockchain technology are essential in enabling patient privacy and securing health data. BurstIQ is leveraging blockchain and Dock’s Verifiable Credential technology to turn any health data into Verifiable Credentials that are portable, secure, and maintains data integrity as it moves within and outside of the LifeGraph system.
Learn More
- Webinar: Blockchain in Healthcare with Dr. Wendy Charles, BurstIQ’s Chief Scientific Officer
- Webinar: Demo of how BurstIQ is using Verifiable Credentials to ensure data portability and integrity
- Press release: BurstIQ's LifeGraph Toolkit Expands to Include Verifiable Credentials Solution by Dock Labs
- Guide: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs)
- Guide: Data Compliance
About Dock
Dock is a Verifiable Credentials company that provides Dock Certs, a user-friendly, no-code platform, and developer solutions that enable organizations to issue, manage and verify fraud-proof credentials efficiently and securely. Dock enables organizations and individuals to create and share verified data.
