This week, a guest blog curated by our very own Dr Yakup Kilic! Read on to find out more about this new and exciting technology.
What?
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs for short, are rapidly gaining popularity online, and have wide-reaching potential for everything from art collecting to healthcare. But what are they, and how can we use them to our benefit? NFTs are stored on a blockchain network – so to understand NFTs, we must first understand the term blockchain.
In very simple terms, a blockchain is a type of database comprised of a long list of data ‘blocks’ on the internet. There are many different blockchain networks – there is no one single blockchain. An easy way to imagine it is by thinking of the hard drive in your computer. A blockchain is a very large ‘virtual’ hard drive that everyone has access to, but crucially can never be edited or deleted. This is extremely valuable as it means once data is ‘in’ the blockchain, it will never be changed or deleted. Let’s look at an example:
This is a very simplified version of the blockchain – it is a chain of seemingly random letters and numbers, split into blocks!
If you store data in each block, only you will be able to access it, because no-one else will know the specific ‘string’ of code where your data is. As you now know, the blockchain cannot be changed or deleted, this means it is very useful to store records of transactions involving digital money (cryptocurrency e.g. Bitcoin). This is similar to the transactions you see on your bank statement, except now they are stored on the blockchain, instead of on your bank’s computer system. For example, the green block could represent a single bitcoin transaction. Everyone can see it, and it can never be changed!
Now, a non-fungible token (NFT) can also be stored on the blockchain. The red block of text represents an NFT. It is a ‘token’ (a piece of data) and it is non-fungible (it cannot be split or divided, it simply exists as a whole). Something that is ‘non-fungible’ is unique and cannot be replaced by another thing. Compare to that money, which is fungible. My health data is not the same as your health data, it is non-fungible. My £1 coin is the same as your £1 coin, and if we swapped them, we would both still have £1 – it is fungible.
If you make a digital image, you can ‘mint it’ as an NFT i.e. assign a piece of code to it on the blockchain, showing that you own the true, original image. People can copy the picture and post it wherever they like, but only you own the true original. Think of it like the Mona Lisa – many people have a poster of the famous painting, but only the Louvre in Paris has the true original.
So, why does this relate to healthcare?
Why?
While much about NFTs in healthcare remains speculative at this point, many companies are innovating in this area. One current trend involves the use of health data NFTs that can be traded in an open market for real world money.
Your own health data such as your weight, step count or blood pressure can be minted as NFTs and sold online to health tech companies that can utilise this data to power and improve their products. Every time your anonymous health data is used, the data use can be monetised to generate profit for you. Your health data may be very valuable in the future.
One of the main future applications of NFTs is producing secure health records. All of your medical history, test results and medications can be securely and confidentially stored on the blockchain as an NFT. This would be revolutionary for the NHS, with communication between doctors and hospitals currently impacted by slow IT systems. NFTs could help towards a national patient database, accessible by all healthcare professionals, meaning that your quality of care is equal, whether you’re in Clitheroe or Coventry.
NFT health databases could also underpin mass availability of population health data, which would be invaluable to research. Researchers could extract data from all patients with a certain health condition, and see how one piece of health data may affect another. Population studies (research involving whole populations) are the holy grail of medical research, and putting these within easy reach of scientists could be transformative for medical research.
However, creating NFTs involves complex mathematical equations being performed by computers, and this is extremely energy-intensive. The environmental implications are a problem with blockchain in general.
NFTs are also extremely complex, as you may have noticed, and this will be a large barrier to widespread adoption.
How (does this affect you?)
Right now, there is no widespread use of NFT technology in healthcare, so currently the real-world effects are limited.
NFTs are a young technology but are a potentially significant asset for patients of the future. We may one day see national health records, patients monetising their health data or large national health studies, all built off the back of NFTs.
To be useful NFTs must become widely adopted, and overcome a variety of technological, legal and ethical hurdles before their use is mainstream in healthcare. NFTs may well represent an exciting unrealised prospect, and quite possibly they have the potential to revolutionise the world we live in.
As always, best wishes from myHSN!
