Intel, the $167 bln US-based chip manufacturer and technology company, has officially secured a partnership with Healthcare transaction service provider and software development firm PokitDok to utilize Blockchain technology in providing a more efficient platform for companies in the healthcare industry.
In April of 2016, Hyperledger, a Blockchain consortium led by the Linux Foundation, announced the introduction of Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake developed by Intel to process the secure transfer of digital assets for large-scale commercial enterprises and organization.
Within the Hyperledger consortium, member corporations and financial institutions can propose Blockchain platforms and protocols. Once proposed, they are reviewed by the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) before being approved as an official Hyperledger project.
Last year, the TSC officially approved Intel’s proposal of Sawtooth Lake and immediately dove into production and implementation. At the time, Imad Sousou, Vice president and general manager of the Open Source Technology Center at Intel, stated:
“Blockchain technology can help enable secure transfer of digital assets among known and unknown parties. Intel looks forward to collaborating with the Hyperledger Project to advance the security, scalability, and privacy of transactions in enterprise and permission-less systems.”
PokitDok and Intel are actively developing a Blockchain platform called DokChain built on top of Intel’ Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake with a long-term strategy to provide a decentralized and transparent infrastructure for healthcare companies.
Reliable platform
Specifically, the two companies are focusing on the facilitation of the transfer of assets between healthcare companies and potential intermediaries, which currently are conducted through multiple platforms, servers and infrastructures. Essentially, the aim of DokChain and the two companies is to create a Blockchain platform with which healthcare companies can rely on to facilitate all transfers of payments, transactions and assets on a single platform.
In an interview, PokitDok co-founder and CTO Ted Tanner emphasized that the implementation of Blockchain technology could alter the entire healthcare industry and how it processes various data types, including assets, financial information and client data.
Although PokitDok ran a wide range of tests with a variety of Blockchain protocols and networks such as Ethereum, Tanner explained that the company believes Intel’s Sawtooth Lake is a better fit for the healthcare industry.
By using an enterprise-grade Blockchain, Tanner further emphasized that Intel and PokitDok aim to help companies within the healthcare industry to manage and validate identities and information in real-time, with a greater level of transparency. If the technology develops and evolves as planned, Tanner stated that consumers within the healthcare industry should be able to pay bills and process claims without spending hours with customer service and waiting up to 180 days for documents to be processed.
“This is furthering history and software execution in the most pristine sense, completely executing at the hardware level. This is the first step in a revolution. It’s ready to happen and this will happen quickly,” said Mike Reed of Intel.