Peter Pisters

President & CEO, University Health Network

Dr. Peter Pisters is an internationally known health system leader and academic surgeon. He began his tenure as President & CEO of UHN in January, 2015, and is currently a Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining UHN, he spent 20 years at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center as a tenured faculty member in a number of clinical, administrative, and leadership positions. Dr. Pisters served as a Vice-President with leadership over MD Anderson’s regional expansion strategy and multi-site metropolitan Houston operations. As President & CEO, Dr. Pisters is taking UHN on a journey of renewal, aimed at strengthening the organization for patients, staff, physicians and volunteers, through the implementation of key areas of focus. This renewal is helping build the foundation for UHN’s future success.

Big Ideas: How Blockchain will Revolutionize Health Care

If you’ve been paying attention to trends in technology, by now you’ve probably heard of blockchain technology. Blockchain has been making waves as a great disruptor that “could soon give rise to a new era of the Internet.” It’s the technology that made Bitcoin possible, and many foresee that its impact on the world will be just as revolutionary as the Internet was 30 years ago.

What is blockchain?

Blockchain technology creates a means by which an open (i.e. universally accessible) but secure and immutable ledger of events can be employed to record transactions and links to any derived quantities.

In other words, blockchain is a highly secure digital archive where anything from money to intellectual property to personal information can be distributed without an intermediary. It is most notable for its applications in finance, but it has huge potential in industries like manufacturing, retail, government, entertainment and even health care. It is a virtually un-hackable means to safeguard property, privacy and security.

This video from the World Economic Forum provides a useful explanation for what blockchain is, and how it can be used:

How will blockchain technology revolutionize health care?

Simply put, health care organizations could harness the power of blockchain technology to put control of electronic health records back in the hands of patients. This offers an interesting solution to how patients’ medical information is stored and managed: What if a patient had all of their own health care information in a digital wallet, and they could easily control access to it?

Every patient interaction could be recorded in their personal blockchain at the moment of collection, and access to an individual’s information could be managed through their data wallet.

Health records could be more accurately maintained, providing a comprehensive history of visits, tests, surgeries and medications, which would have a huge impact on patient safety. As well, though personal encryption keys, patients can control who has access to what parts of their health record. Patients can curate their own data, and hospitals can crosscheck that data with their own medical records.

How could this impact how our health data is used?

With the amount of data that is created every day, data has become an extremely valuable asset. We are at an age where we’re constantly generating data, whether it’s through our smart phones or activity trackers like Fitbits. Across many industries, there are huge benefits to data sharing, and big considerations for data privacy.

Within the world of health care, data-rich patient records and data sharing could enable clinicians to make more accurate diagnoses and deliver treatments faster. When data from many users are collected, it presents opportunities to mine large amounts of data that could potentially lead to breakthroughs in medical science.

Here at UHN, this all comes down to our primary value: the needs of patients come first. For hospitals, protecting the privacy of our patients’ data is of the utmost importance, and blockchain technology would provide a pathway to secure data transfers. Blockchain technology has huge potential to enhance patient privacy and patient care.

UHN is one of the founding members of the Blockchain Research Institute, whose aim is to explore the implications of blockchain. Along with others, we will explore how this new technology can change health care.

This blog post appears as part of the Big Ideas Lecture Series for the Research Institute of Health Care Education. Big Ideas explores simulation, artificial intelligence, telesimulation and e-health innovation, among others. The series brings together experts to share insights into emerging issues and trends, to advance understanding of issues affecting health care education, research, practice and society, and to support the research and work produced at the Research Institute of Health Care Education.