Division of Informatics, Imaging and Data Sciences, Health EResearch Centre, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.
Department of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom.
Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 May 25;294:382-386. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220479.
In recent years we have seen the adoption of distributed ledger technology (DLT), originally the mechanism underpinning the operation of the Bitcoin crypto currency, across a wider range of technology sectors including healthcare. DLT allows for the design of informatics systems with the properties of immutability, security, and decentralization. One recent innovation in the space has been the specification and development of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). NFTs are decentralized DLT-based records that represent ownership of a unique digital asset. The predominant current use case for NFTs has been in the representation and sale of digital artwork, however the features offered by NFTs, unique-ness, immutability, transferability, and verifiability, are directly applicable to the design of health informatics systems. In this paper we explore these properties and describe a reference architecture for using NFTs as a means of representing and transferring records of patient's consent for medical data use.
近年来，我们见证了分布式账本技术（DLT）的采用，最初是作为比特币加密货币运作的机制，已经在包括医疗保健在内的更广泛的技术领域得到应用。DLT 允许设计具有不变性、安全性和去中心化特性的信息学系统。最近在该领域的一项创新是对非同质化代币（NFT）的规范和开发。NFT 是基于 DLT 的去中心化记录，代表对独特数字资产的所有权。NFT 的主要当前用例是在数字艺术品的表示和销售方面，但是 NFT 提供的特性，独特性、不可变性、可转移性和可验证性，直接适用于医疗信息学系统的设计。在本文中，我们探讨了这些特性，并描述了一个参考架构，用于使用 NFT 来表示和传输患者对医疗数据使用的同意记录。
