ASU blockchain research is innovating the healthcare experience

In an ever-evolving digital age, finding ways to secure user data and protect online privacy is critical. Research professor Dragan Boscovic is exploring how to do that as director of the ASU Blockchain Research Lab in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University.

“Blockchain has three components — scalability, security and decentralization — and our goal is to find the right balance between them for the given application,” says Boscovic, a faculty member in the Fulton Schools’ computer science and engineering program.

These principles drive one of the ASU Blockchain Research Lab’s newest research projects: using the blockchain to help secure and protect medical information through a new app that has the potential to put patients in control of their health data. By gathering information on the blockchain, the app will help users worldwide store their health records, make decisions about how the data can be used and receive personalized health recommendations.

“To be taken seriously in this industry, you have to increase the throughput of a specific network so that it can handle hundreds of transactions per second,” says Boscovic. “To put that in perspective, Visa handles 65,000 transactions per second, so our initial goal for research was to get into the thousands.”

Industry interest in collaborating with the ASU Blockchain Research Lab grew following work on Dash, a digital currency for payments and e-commerce. That success led to partnerships with several companies, including Intel, Early Warning, Kudelski Security, BD, SRP, Threshold Network, Constellation Network, Helium Network and more. The work explores a wide range of blockchain applications such as identity management, supply chain, inventory management and a concept called zero-knowledge proof, or how to uniquely identify a person without revealing any personal information.

“The great thing about our work is that there is no one theme; everything we do identifies specific problems that our industrial partners face and how we can optimize the industrial workflow, which can be solved through decentralization, says Boscovic.

In 2019, the lab began exploring how to translate blockchain research into healthcare. Manish Vishnoi, a Fulton Schools alumnus and former Blockchain Research Lab graduate student, focused his master’s thesis on how people can maintain ownership of their medical data and only share it on a need-to-know basis with doctors, pharmacies and insurance providers. The lab took this research to the NuCypher + CoinList Spring Hackathon, winning the Community Choice Award.

Two years later, CEO Ben Jorgensen of Constellation Network—a company that develops scalable solutions for processing and transferring large data sets—gave an industry presentation to Boscovic’s student club, Blockchain at ASU. Bringing together members of the lab with the network’s partner, JennyCo, a new company that aims to elevate the health experience in the same way.

JennyCo seeks to enable consumers, large corporations and brands to seamlessly share and access user data through a new HIPAA-compliant blockchain service exchange managed by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or DAO.

According to JennyCo founder and CEO Dr. Michael Nova, “Users of our app will be able to contribute their commerce, electronic health records, social, internet of things, device and other health data and will receive personalized AI-generated recommendations along with compensation.”

The goal of the app is to use blockchain technology to give users control over their own health data, which is a first of its kind. In addition to data ownership, users who choose to store information on the app will have access to valuable health insights, AI-generated personalized recommendations for lifestyle changes and suggested wellness products, a community of other users to engage with, and the ability to receive rewards through cryptocurrency tokens if they choose to have their data used in research and product studies (users can also opt out).

“Blockchain technology has the potential to transform health data, placing the patient at the center of the healthcare ecosystem and increasing security, privacy and interoperability,” says Nova. “In our collaboration on this project, Dr. Boscovic and his students have demonstrated a deep understanding of the use cases we have presented and have smartly proposed system flows and technologies that will ultimately advance our cause.”

Vishnoi, whose master’s thesis led in part to this collaboration, will continue his work with Boscovic and the ASU Blockchain Research Lab in his new role as a member of the JennyCo team, serving as Chief Technology Officer.

“JennyCo’s mission was very similar to the core principle of my thesis, so it felt like a natural fit,” he says. “If it’s your data, you should be the one in charge of it. You should know where it’s being shared or who it’s being shared with, and you should be the one being rewarded for its use.”

Vishnoi says there is still work to be done to get the app working and ready for the next step since blockchain is a very new technology.

“It requires a lot of research and planning, which is the phase we’re in now with the Blockchain Research Lab,” says Vishnoi. “We are currently brainstorming ideas for how we want to implement blockchain and working through various solutions with Dr. Boscovic, and the students involved are creating a proof of concept. Healthcare data is very sensitive, so we are committed to ensuring that what we implement is very secure.”

In addition to the opportunities available to students in the lab, this collaboration also funds the JennyCo Blockchain Scholarship Program to provide support to students at Fulton Schools to gain exposure to blockchain technology.

ASU students can also look forward to a new online course focusing on the blockchain data market to complement the Fulton School’s existing master’s degree program in computer science, as well as guest lectures by JennyCo executives.