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HC-SIG Charter

Hyperledger, as part of the Linux Foundation, provides technology leaders a uniquely open and collaborative international community from which to develop, validate, and field enterprise-grade blockchain technology solutions. It is the mandate of this Special Interest Group, the Hyperledger Healthcare Special Interest Group (HC-SIG), to represent healthcare professionals and technologists, and globally unite in advancing the state of the healthcare industry through the implementation of technology solutions using blockchain technologies in general, and the umbrella of Hyperledger frameworks and toolsets in specific.

Full Text of HC-SIG Charter

To review the full text of the HC-SIG Charter, please view here.

Mission & Scope

The mission of the HC-SIG shall be to:

• Identify specific opportunities where the application of blockchain technologies can meaningfully advance the state of the healthcare industry

• Provide a foundation for real world use case identification, blockchain technology alignment, and operational validation of technology fit for purpose

• Provide recommendations for the ethical use and implications of blockchain technologies

• Promote the community education of, and participation in blockchain technologies, policies, and protocols

• Serve as an open channel of communication between the membership of this Special Interest Group and the leadership of Hyperledger to inform leadership on prospective improvements of Hyperledger frameworks and toolsets, within the context of the healthcare industry

The scope of the HC-SIG shall include:

• The identification, development, and promotion of use cases, pilots, proofs of concept (POCs), proofs of value (POVs), and in certain cases, minimum viable products (MVPs) to educate and demonstrate the value of applicable blockchain technologies solutions in healthcare. Some examples of in-scope capability areas include, but are not limited to:

• Distributed patient trust tools using self-sovereign identity (SSI)

• Incentivization using tokenization and/or cryptocurrency technologies to encourage member participation within a blockchain technologies-enabled solution

• Interoperability solutions using distributed ledger technologies (DLT) to interconnect with datasets longitudinally across disparate healthcare systems

• The identification, documentation, and promotion of blockchain technologies solutions best practices, as applied in a healthcare industry context

• The sharing of stories within and across membership boundaries: successes, failures, lessons learned, opportunities and challenges

• The identification of existing or needed common critical software components as they relate to blockchain solutions that would address the particular needs of the healthcare industry

• The identification and promotion of conferences or related social networking opportunities (e.g., speaking engagements) to gain experiences outside of this Special Interest Group

• The identification and promotion of healthcare industry and related challenges and competitions designed to convene team(s) internal to this Special Interest Group for the purposes of driving focus and common purpose to a goal(s) recognized as beneficial to the whole of the Special Interest Group

• The education of both membership and the community on blockchain technologies, policies, and protocols as they relate to the healthcare industry

Meetings

General Meetings

HC-SIG General Meetings are scheduled twice monthly, and serves to provide a summary of membership activities within the SIG, as well as a summary "roll up" of active HC-SIG teams and subgroups presented by team and subgroup leads.

Interested in viewing an archived presentation, or joining a scheduled HC-SIG General Meeting? Videoconferencing/teleconferencing connect details are available here.

Subgroup Meetings

Subgroups are formalized teams of HC-SIG members with an express interest in developing solutions around specific topics. Subgroups are required to develop a charter, meet regularly, and report the status of their efforts at every HC-SIG General Meeting. In short, HC-SIG subgroups is where the interesting work of this SIG is accomplished. The HC-SIG currently maintains three subgroups:

Patient Subgroup

The mission of this group is to focus on problems related to healthcare patients and to facilitate understanding and adoption of distributed ledger technologies within healthcare payer industry by identifying specific opportunities where the application of blockchain technologies can be meaningful.

For more information, see the Patient Subgroup page here.

Payer Subgroup

The mission of this group is to focus on problems related to payer industry and to facilitate adoption of blockchain technologies within healthcare payer industry by identifying specific opportunities where the application of blockchain technologies can be meaningful.

For more information, see the Payer Subgroup page here.

Healthcare Interoperability Subgroup

It is the mission of this subgroup to demonstrate how health information can be made interoperable and exchanged with equal meaning amongst all participants.

The problem of portability for healthcare information is not just a problem in the US, and all solutions provided by this sub-group are meant to be universal and will source existing technologies from international healthcare institutions.

For more information, see the Healthcare Interoperability Subgroup page here.

Links to Ongoing Work

HC-SIG subgroups are key the developing actionable solutions within this SIG: each subgroup focussed on a special area of interest driven by their charter/mission statement.

For specific details on the work being done within the HC-SIG, see the work descriptions of our HC-SIG Subgroups (described above).

Links to External Resources

HC-SIG membership regularly provides updates to blockchain technologies resources within the industry and they are discovered and evolve. 

An excellent page to review is the Research Resources page, which is updated regularly.

HC-SIG Membership Directory

HC-SIG members represent a very wide diversity of healthcare and technology professionals worldwide. This SIG maintains a directory that can be edited directly by HC-SIG members.

View the HC-SIG Membership Directory here.