What is IRIS?
Blockchain-based applications and currencies have made a substantial impact on the field of financial technologies. However, blockchain technology applies to many other sectors, and is particularly suited to the management of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), a field where authentication, accountability, and the maintenance of an unchanging, secure log is extremely important. The volumes of data being generated by modern medical technology are often scattered across medical practitioners, inaccessible to the patient, and stored using insecure and impermanent methods. On the contrary, in a blockchain based model patient care such as medical tests, interventions and outcomes can be decentralized across providers, giving patients access to their comprehensive record and preventing duplication and information loss. Agents in the medical sphere such as researchers and governments, as well as insurance providers and pharmaceutical companies, are incentivized to participate by the reward of access to aggregate, anonymized medical data, which they can access by buying and trading Iris Tokens on a designated marketplace. The adoption of blockchain technology into the EHR sphere has the potential to revolutionize patient-centered care as well as provide big data to researcher working on important healthcare breakthroughs.