Myongji Hospital of South Korea Signs MoU with Tech Firm To Use Blockchain

South Korea’s Myongji Hospital has announced a collaboration with IT firm BICube to develop a blockchain-based medical services platform. The two entities, that have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) plan to eventually launch the service commercially as well, possibly by next year itself.

The partnership, announced by a press release from the hospital on 12th November, is expected to develop a hybrid cloud platform, that incorporates elements of both public and private blockchain networks. The cloud platform is expected to serve as a system that facilitates exchange of healthcare-related information. Given the role of blockchain in healthcare can be potentially enormous, this initiative from such a major player in the healthcare scene in South Korea makes for a heartening development. BiCube, which evidently focuses greatly on machine learning alongside other IT offerings, is based in Korea itself and this inter-industry collaborative effort sets the tune for further developments to come.

The project itself is said to establish a decentralized database where authorized patients can upload sensitive medical information about their respective medical histories. This will help in maintaining a coherent body of information that comes handy in both research as well as better healthcare services for the patients.

This year, we have seen how third generation blockchain projects are becoming hot in South Korea. In addition to that positive trend, we have been seeing the authorities take a more supportive stance as well. Last to last month, the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA), which works under the aegis of the Ministry of Science and ICT, declared that they would be carrying out their public blockchain pilot project for over a decade- around 12 years, instead of the 6 years they had originally planned. They also announced their intention to spend around 9 million dollars to drive greater adoption of blockchain tech in the public sector entities as well as the private companies. More recently, the government indicated plans to set aside about 35 million dollars as budgetary allocation for this emerging industry, as the new financial year approaches.