Interview with Chrissa McFarlane

Abstract

Despite incredible advancements over the last decade in converting paper healthcare records into digital, a vast majority of consumers lack timely access to their electronic medical records. Many people cannot manage and utilise their healthcare records any better than they could a decade ago or even three decades ago. While it can be easy for some to point the finger at the bureaucracy and red tape of healthcare institutions, the truth is that many of these institutions would like to share data with their patients but don’t have a secure and easy way to do this. This has been a challenging dilemma because many medical providers use different electronic health record (EHR) systems that do not talk to each other.. This becomes a significant problem as patients are often caught in the middle of the healthcare industry’s interoperability and without solutions that can provide secure, universal access to their healthcare data. In this interview, Chrissa McFarlane talks about how a Blockchain based healthcare solutions can empower patients, clinicians and healthcare organizations to readily harness meaningful data to make more effective and efficient treatment, and financial decisions, enabling real improvement opportunities as well as the safe access, store and transfer of information, thus improving care coordination while ensuring data security.