China’s IT ministry still has some concerns about “blockchain hospital”.
China’s first “blockchain hospital” is scheduled to open in 2021, but some members of the government are now expressing concerns about data protection
According to Cn-Healthcare , the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University plans to start a corresponding pilot program from January 2021. The blockchain technology is to be used in the course of this to save patient data and treatment data.
The blockchain platform used is intended, among other things, to enable patients to access a so-called “Internet hospital” via the WeChat app, which is very popular in China. One of the goals of the program is to make administrative processes increasingly contactless, which is all the more important due to the ongoing Corona crisis.
However, several members of the Chinese Ministry of Information Technology have concerns about the security of the blockchain application and also see data protection at risk.
Niu Tie, the director of the hospital, replied:
“Our IT department is under a lot of pressure from the government. As one of the leading hospitals in our region, we can assure you that we made our decisions with great caution. In addition, the data protection regulations are very strict anyway. The IT ministry has checked our blockchain application with regard to data security and also made specifications for development. ”
As Niu states, the ministry has made it a condition that data can be verified and that it can be securely stored, transferred and accessed.
The ministry’s concerns may well stem from the fact that patient and treatment data is stored on WeChat’s blockchain network. Hospital management and the IT ministry now want to discuss in further discussions how security and data protection can best be guaranteed.
China is actually known as a surveillance state , which makes the government’s current concerns contradicting and almost unreliable.
However, the “Middle Kingdom” is very benevolent of blockchain technology, because in 2020 alone, Chinese companies are said to have submitted more than half of all blockchain patents worldwide . Even China’s President Xi Jinping has already publicly praised the technology .