Welcome and Opening Statements

• A reminder to all HC-SIG members that this meeting is being recorded

• Reading of the Linux Foundation Antitrust Policy

  • Hyperledger Antitrust Slide

• Discussion: request for note-taking for this meeting

In attendance:

• Rich Bloch
• Alan Bachmann
• Bilal Saleh
• Raveesh Dewan
• Wendy Charles (recording)
• Jeff Stollman
• Steven Elliott
• Kamlesh Nagware
• Jim Mason
• jonathan
• John Riley III

Introductions

• If you’re new to the group, please…

  • Introduce yourself

  • Tell us where you're geographically located

  • Share with us your interests in healthcare in general, and blockchain technologies in specific

Community Announcements

• Feel free to share your community announcements as they relate to the Hyperledger community

HC-SIG Subgroup Updates

• Patient/Member Subgroup (Benjamin Djidi, Lead)

• Rich provided an update on the donor milk project. The subgroup is still looking for a new subject matter expert. 

• Payer Subgroup (Raveesh Dewan, Lead)

• Raveesh provided an overview of the subgroup’s efforts. They are still working on a paper about payer opportunities. The paper will outline a decision framework, in general. It will provide decision points and a payer perspective.

• Healthcare Interoperability Subgroup (Steven Elliott, Lead)

• The subgroup is still putting together a charter with a mission statement that will help to identify and define goals and directions. They want to place clinical artifacts on the blockchain in an interoperable way. The goal is to finish this weekend. First use case considered: vaccinations and credentialing.

• Jonathan Holt added that IEEE Working Group is producing a great working framework that that will aid with vaccinations and credentialing. The framework is blockchain agnostic but will provide standards.

• Jim Mason added that there is an MIT Blockchain White Paper that may add to Jonathan’s efforts: https://hardjono.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/hardjono-lipton-pentland-p2pfisy-2018.pdf and an EU GDPR paper https://www.eublockchainforum.eu/sites/default/files/reports/report_scalaibility_06_03_2019.pdf

HC-SIG Ad Hoc Team Updates

• Wiki Redesign Team (Brian Ahier and Raveesh Dewan, Lead)

  • Work continues on our SIG site design

• Rich explained that documents are on Confluence and still transitioning. The goal is to synchronize with other working groups so that any member of a SIG can participate in more than one group without learning a new system.

• Academic Research Team (Logan Wilding and Adrian Berg, Lead)

  • Logan plans to generate a one-page summary of next steps

  • Currently in works, draft located here

• Rich explained they put together a paper several months ago that addresses peer reviewed resources. The process for vetting new technologies typically involves peer review. This team is trying to message a way forward to engage companies. Goal is to put forth a platform agnostic paper. The current draft is located here.

Old Business

• Getting Published? (Rich)

  • We have some extraordinary talent in our membership… let's put that to good use

  • Wiki page added here

• There are over 1000 talented individuals that could contribute to papers. If anyone is interested in participating or collaborating in paper writing, they should sign up. Rich added that that health care organizations are academically-wedded and slow to accept new information. They seek objective, peer-reviewed information.

• Wendy Charles shared her observations of current academic publications about blockchain.

• Jim Mason described a project focused on Puerto Rico: a new university focused on certifying individuals with current version of Hyperledger Fabric. He added that it is focused on unique Hyperledger Fabric enterprise features.

• Wiki page added here.

• Healthcare technologies challenges (Rich)

• KidneyX Redesign Dialysis Prize Competition

  • Aetna/CVSHealth submitted their proposal (Alan Bachmann)

• Congratulations to Alan and his team for submitting their Aetna/CVSHealth proposal to the KidneyX organization
• Alan shared he is trying to determine patterns that can be scaled for enterprise use. He described the current manual—and often paper-based—processes that inhibit the process. He described efforts to use blockchain to share or access information. The overall goal is to improve kidney care. Rich added that chronic kidney disease affects 13% of population and is managed by CMS in a formal way that must be thoroughly documented. He described current treatments and efforts to improve efficiency using blockchain and integrate using digital identity methods. 

New Business

• Hyperledger Quarterly SIG Report due 04/15

  • Subgroup and team leads need to generate a summary of their work over this past quarter (Q12019)

• • A report is due to Hyperledger leadership by 04/15. Anyone who is a subgroup or team lead should contribute a one paragraph summary of work and status. Normally this report would focus on the past quarter, but Rich requested an update over the past six months.

• 2019 HC-SIG Survey Results (Rich)

  • Survey results summary is located here

  • Some survey observations are summarized below:

    • HC-SIG membership works in the following top three industries: healthcare, technology, and consulting
    • Within the healthcare industry HC-SIG members worked in these top areas: software development/informaticist, software development in smart contracts, and entrepreneur
    • HC-SIG members participate in this group for: education, business networking, and social networking
    • HC-SIG members have been involved in blockchain technologies for: 3-5 years (32.3%), 1-3 years (29%), and <1 (29%)
    • The majority of HC-SIG members responding (41.9%) indicating that they have a moderate understanding of blockchain technologies
    • Top non-Hyperledger blockchain-related technologies include: Ethereum, Bitcoin, and IPFS
    • The majority of HC-SIG members polled are primarily interested in using Hyperledger to solve business problems in healthcare, next to contributing software back into the Hyperledger codebases
    • Not surprisingly, Fabric, Sawtooth, and Indy are the top three frameworks that HC-SIG members are interested in learning more about, while Composer, Explorer, and Cello are the top three tools
    • Clinical data exchange, public health data exchange, and PII are the top-ranked technology segments within healthcare HC-SIG members are most interested in exploring in future  meetings
    • Smart contracts, self-sovereign identity management, and decentralized apps (dApps) are the top-ranked blockchain technology segments within healthcare HC-SIG members are most interested in exploring in future  meetings
    • Email and telcons are the most preferred means for HC-SIG communications
    • Semi-weekly telecons were ranked highest (71%) for frequency of meeting

    
    

• HIMSS 2019 Conference Report (All)

• Discussion: for those who attended, your thoughts?

• Rich noted that many people asked about use cases, but this SIG doesn’t operate in group cases. He recommended considering documenting use cases.

  • Blockchain governance: He also noted that there is a lot of interest in governance. It sounds like people are more interested in the details.

• • • Healthcare Use Cases (Rich)
      • Discussion: do we need a team/subgroup to develop healthcare use cases?

• • • Blockchain Governance (Rich)

• • • • Discussion: do we need a team/subgroup to think about the governance of healthcare blockchain technology solutions?

• Open Discussions (Rich)

  • Discussion: your thoughts on changes you'd like to see with the HC-SIG?

Next Meeting

• Scheduled for Friday, 2019.03.22, 0700 Pacific Time

• Discussion: topics to add to agenda?