Page 10 - GCN, August/September 2018

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CDC tests blockchain for data sharing
BY CAROLINE MOHAN
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are testing the use of blockchain to make the sharing of electronic health records more transparent.
Users often don’t trust data-sharing systems because they cannot “see, as the data moves through its life cycle, who has access to it at what point,” said Askari Rizvi, chief of the Technical Services Branch of CDC’s Division
of Health Care Statistics, during a webinar in August.
In a pilot program with the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and IBM, CDC is using blockchain to secure data and metadata collected from EHRs with clients’ consent. Blockchain records every data transaction, which means patients, health care providers, CDC researchers and auditors will be able to account for all data transactions and determine whether there has been any malicious activity.
Data from CDC’s National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey
is submitted to NCHS, where it is edited, sampled, tested for eligibility, formatted and validated. Typically, the data is then stored as a “public use file.”
With blockchain, CDC researchers will be able to see who accesses the data.
Blockchain encryption and decryption processes are complex, and researchers plan to make tweaks after the trial. Once the process is perfected, officials said data gathered from clients, EHRs and survey reports will be sampled, validated, edited and stored in a quicker, more transparent way. •
HHS unveils blockchain- powered acquisition assistance
10 GCN AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2018 • GCN.COM
BY TROY K. SCHNEIDER
One of the obstacles to bringing blockchain into government business processes is simple confusion: Most government stakeholders barely understand what a distributed ledger is, much less how it can help them do their jobs.
So at the Department of Health and Human Services, Jose Arrieta and his team have flipped that education process on its head. Since April, they’ve been meeting with acquisition officials across HHS to learn exactly how their jobs get done and only then looking to layer in the benefits of blockchain.
The results have been rapid. Arrieta, who is associate deputy assistant secretary in HHS’ Division of Acquisition, told a National Contract Management Association audience in July that his agency already has a new system up
and running. He said most of the preparation time was spent on human-centered design interviews across HHS. Building the system took just four weeks, and the total price tag so far is less than $500,000.
The new system gives acquisition teams detailed, real-time information on pricing and terms and conditions across HHS for 10 categories of purchases. Arrieta said there are also microservices to help automate the development of acquisition plans
and marketing documents, and the beginnings of a tool that would help HHS vendors pull data on their past interactions with the agency and avoid “the trouble of resubmitting all the past info over and over again.”
Arrieta told GCN the key was to pull data from existing systems and
layer in new tools without altering the underlying processes.
“HHS is super-decentralized [with] lots of different cultures,” he said. “We’re not trying to change the contract-writing tools they use.” By approaching the blockchain-powered ledger as a complement to current systems and not a competitor, he simplified the development process and avoided conflict with the owners of those legacy solutions.
The project, called HHS Accelerate, has also benefited from efforts elsewhere in the department. A machine learning algorithm called HHS Buy Smarter, for example, powers much of the analysis that Accelerate uses to provide real-time pricing insights. “It’s a culture that was already changing,” Arrieta told GCN. “What we’re doing now is operationalizing great work that was already done.”
The new tools are not yet deployed to the workforce, he added, noting that full user testing will have to wait until the end of the fiscal year, when HHS acquisition shops’ busy season is over. But he said reactions to early demonstrations have been “extremely positive — eye-opening, this-changes-the-world positive.”
And since the blockchain data layer was designed essentially as a shared service for HHS, Arrieta said he expects new services to be built on it to address other acquisition needs in the near future.
“Our goal is to digitize the entire acquisition life cycle — all the way from engagement with industry
to a contract closeout — on a blockchain,” he said.•