One of the major challenges in healthcare is the difficulty and complexity around data sharing due to the compliance and managing of data consent and governance. The idea is to define a HIPAA compliance consent protocol that allows for a decentralized approach to providing and managing consent. The value of a distributed ledger / blockchain is the ability for transparency and verification, specially around a public ledger. The hypothesis is that a specific consent protocol (where it capture the consent mechanism, ,does not have any PII data & enforces data governance) can be created and deployed in a public manner. This would enable any healthcare organization to become part of the ledger and provide services based on a universal and individual consent, provided by the individual and with strong governance employed by all parties in the network.

Based on the hypothesis, the idea would be that other organizations would be able to use the protocol and develop a family of smart contracts to innovate healthcare approach and innovation by gaining access to strong vetted data while meeting compliance based on individual consent.