Using non-fungible tokens for secure health data management

SingHealth, a healthcare provider in Singapore, is exploring the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as a potential solution for managing and exchanging health data in a secure and privacy-preserving manner. 

NFTs, which are unique digital data units stored on the blockchain, offer features of uniqueness, transparency, and interoperability. Health data can be minted, exchanged and stored using blockchain technology, which would allow patients to own and exchange their personal health data with multiple stakeholders. Each patient can own, store and share their health data in the form of NFTs using a health wallet hosted on a secure web-based or smartphone application. 

The use of NFTs shifts the onus of sharing individual patient data to each patient, thus fostering a closer relationship between the healthcare provider and the patient. Furthermore, sharing health data as NFTs ensures complete transparency and accuracy of healthcare research data, due to the traceable and unalterable nature of the blockchain. 

SingHealth anticipates a growing need for privacy-preserving solutions to enhance the applications of data for medical research and clinical care purposes, and the use of NFTs will allow for a secure healthcare data exchange platform.