It was announced on September 17 by the precision medicine and biotechnology company Macrogen (CEO Kap-Seok Yang, www.macrogen.com) that it had been granted a U.S. patent for its blockchain-based data-sharing technology. The patent for a ‘data-sharing method based on the plurality of blockchains (patent No. 10417219)’ was jointly filed with the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) by Psomagen and Macrogen.
A technology that combines a token economy system with a blockchain platform to facilitate active data sharing and transactions is known as the registered U.S. patent. By the use of this technology, users who desire to purchase data can conveniently make payments with a point or token which is automatically distributed to the brokerage platform commission and provider reward by the ‘smart contract’. Additional rewards will be obtained by individuals who have agreed to provide and distribute their data, not only for the initial data-sharing process but also for each data transaction thereafter.
The ownership of healthcare and genomic data that hospitals and/or testing institutions had is returned to the individuals using this technology. Data providers can directly interact with users by the blockchain-based transaction environment created by this . Eventually, this technology will create an ecosystem where individuals can easily make use of their rights at every stage of the healthcare big data value chain—from generation and storage to searching and utilization.
Using this technology, the healthcare big data distribution platform not only allows individuals to own and manage their healthcare data but also make profits from data sharing. Creating a principled cycle in which larger amounts of high-quality healthcare data are accumulated at a faster pace, this system brings about the active participation of data providers. Otherwise stated, high-quality, highly useful healthcare big data can be collected and integrated more quickly.