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Healthcare Special Interest Group (HC-SIG)
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HC-SIG Overall Health
The HC-SIG continues to evolve as it grows in membership, participation, and activities. We are in a transitional process have successfully completed our transition to structure the General group Group to serve as a “front door” to better engage and keep prospective new members active in the community, align them with resources, and connect them more directly with our three HC-SIG subgroups.
HC-SIG General Meetings are held regularly and are well-attended. While our EMR Subgroup has been slow to establish a regular meeting cadence, both HC-SIG Subgroups continue to evolve. Both the Patient/Member Subgroup and the Payer Subgroup are meeting regularly and seeing growth in attendance and an increase in repeat member participation.
Of merit, the Patient/Member Subgroup is in active development on a Fabric-based project, the Human Donor Milk Use Case, collaborating with Rapid Healthcare of Irvine, CA. The subgroup team successfully leveraged that project activity into a HIMSS Asia Pacific Innovations Challenge submission in mid-September 2018.
Issues
At the end of 2018 the EMR Subgroup was disbanded due to inconsistent meetings. The Healthcare Interoperability Subgroup--the newest HC-SIG subgroup--is due to come online in early April.
HC-SIG Teams include:
- The Academic Research Team: developing a white paper to identify how best to engage the academic/healthcare community as the topic relates to blockchain technologies
- The Charter Review Team: charged with reviewing and rewriting the HC-SIG Charter (completed)
- The Wiki Redesign Team: initially convened to redesign the HC-SIG wiki, now working to manage wiki page conversion to Confluence, and sync with other SIG design efforts
- The Subgroup Review Team: convened to review the status of the EMR Subgroup, and to consider how other subgroup models may influence future HC-SIG subgroup designs
HC-SIG membership participated in three guest presentations: Seattle-area attorneys to speak on open source and IP-sharing; a development team interested in creating a healthcare solution using the Hyperledger Sawtooth framework; and Microsoft Corporation to speak on blockchain technologies and security in healthcare.
Of merit, the HC-SIG became a sponsor for a healthcare-related Github Lab project entitled "Sawtooth Healthcare." As well, HC-SIG members participated in the 2018 Hyperledger Global Forum, and participated in the 2019 HIMSS Conference.
Issues
None to dateThe Patient/Member Subgroup has encountered technical hurdles as they've spun up their Fabric-based project through Github. While some issues skew more towards a lack of clarity in understanding Hyperledger policy as it relates to project management within the Hyperledger namespace (perhaps limitations of Github itself), the overall process has yet to seem fluid and efficient for both leads and project team members. Our team continues to work in collaboration with Hyperledger Project members to gain a better overall understanding of this process.
Overall Activity in the Past Quarter
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Membership and activity across the healthcare-wg listserv(healthcare-wg@sig@lists.hyperledger.org) continue to grow. Listserv membership is currently at 1018 ~1045 members. Our chat channel, #healthcare-wg sig (https://chat.hyperledger.org/channel/healthcare-wgsig), is seeing regular daily exchanges.
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The best part of this subgroup is that everyone is contributing actively.
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Healthcare Interoperability Subgroup
Active since June, 2018 and led by Robert Chu, the EHR subgroup has kicked off its activity with its two first meetings. The EHR subgroup has agreed to structure its work in three phases:
Describe the EHR blockchain use case
Define a reference architecture for EHR blockchain systems
Provide a framework and process for open-source code contribution with the reference architecture
The subgroup will hold calls every two weeks. Calls are recorded and recordings are made available to the subgroup. External subject matter experts to the group will be invited to provide a perspective on particular aspectsWith the recent charter approval in mid-March, the Healthcare Interoperability Subgroup (HC-SIG HIS) has not yet had its first meeting, but preliminary membership interests are high. Steven Elliott serves as the HIS Lead.
Planned Work Products
General Group
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We will soon be looking for members who can help with the coding of the POC.
EHR Subgroup
For the next quarter, the subgroup plans to deliver a 10-15 page document describing the following for its EHR blockchain use case:
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