Hi.,

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Thanks C K Gomathy for kind reply.

I think your valuable comments are not solving my confusions. However, i intend to read about all the topics that you suggest. For a naive person like me, it will be helpful

Dear Azeem Faizi,

your question is rather unclear. Maybe you tell us a little bit about your goals?

Using a blockchain based on any kind of Proof-Of-Work in your setting does not make sense (as it is insecure - mining power could be shifted to attack "your" blockchain).

If you want to have healthcare data on a blockchain, I guess a private/premissioned one is a good fit for you. C K Gomathy already listed some useful names there.

Regarding (1) usually, your non profit organisation will participate as "miners" and "full nodes" in a such a blockchain to prevent single points of failure and to control/audit the considered blockchain.

Usually, they won't get any reward for doing so (2) and thus needs to be rewarded/funded externally.

(3) depends on your overall design of the application on top of the blockchain. (And I'm not really sure whether putting encrypted data in there is a good idea, because if a key gets corrupted, an attacker can access the patient's data).

I do not understand (4) but of course you should be able to "track" any data in a more or less well-constructed blockchain.

Cheers,

Mike

Azeem,

I can totally understand your confusion. Normally, I suggest reading this article by Nic Carter, titled "Blockchain Is a Semantic Wasteland": https://medium.com/s/story/blockchain-is-a-semantic-wasteland-9450b6e5012

Before I can answer your questions, we have to agree that:

- the model for a "financial application of Blockchain" is Bitcoin

- Bitcoin success comes from the alignment between its (game-theoretical) economic incentives and the security needs of its (adversarial) peer-to-peer network

Put differently, plugging hashpower and collaborative nodes into the platform provide cryptocurrency to repay on a cost-plus basis the service. Then, a permissionless/anonymous peer-to-peer network - and a clever "mining difficulty" algorithm - provide self-adjusting equilibrium between costs and revenues - that grow linearly with the cryptocurrency exchange rate.

Going on with your questions:

(1) Who validate or mine the blocks in non financial applications of Blockchain ?

I believe we need to extend the analysis to general economic incentives. We want to identify who has economic incentives to validate the blocks, and align these incentives with the needs of the platform and its users. For example, Napster's peer-to-peer network was driven by its (illegal) free access to music.

(2) From whom/where the miner will get reward in non financial applications of Blockchain ?

There are no clear answers and depends on the use case. However, we may test the above "economic incentives" hypothesis against lower infrastructure costs, lower trust intermediation risks, higher customer adoption and/or profits.

(And good luck with that...)

(3) Considering Healthcare application, Who will write the details of medical report of Patient. If Physician, then how ? because Physician don't know the Private key of the patient.

Answering this question requires a broader discussion about the infrastructure, the business case, and why non-blockchain systems cannot be used.

Identifying the concept of blockchain with a database is wrong and logically cumbersome (Bitcoin Core client uses BerkleyDB, for example). Have you tried with the blockchain as a data-structure? Have you explored the opportunity to use the blockchain only for the chain-of-custody of the keys that can decrypt these medical reports?

(4) Can we track the Health record of ant patient or it is permission Blockchain

It depends on what you need to track, and why. Is it an identity and access management problem? Is it a data-integrity problem? Is it an availability problem? Is it a portability/self-sovereign problem?

I hope it helps,

Stefano.

Thanks Mike Graf and Stefano Pepe for your reply

My questions were little bit unclear due to less knowledge about this topic. Your answers are helpful for me.

I have little bit confusion regarding question no 3 that how a patient's record is maintained on healthcare Blockchain and who is responsible for CRUD operations?

Thanks

Dear Azeem Faizi,

again, there is no general answer to this question. The answer depends on the blockchain technology you want to use and the system, you want to build on top of this.

For example, if you use something like Ethereum which allows you to smart contracts, the patient could allow that a clinic has write access to his data.

Maybe you should make yourself familiar with some blockchain technologies in detail. I'm pretty sure that this clarifies your confusion.

By the way, there are dozens of papers on the topic "blockchains in healthcare" published. Maybe they answer your questions.

Cheers,

Mike

It depends. For example governmental blockchain applications could be run by several governmental institutions. There would be no need for rewards, since every department or whatsoever is running one node. Therefore, the costs for the infrastructure are shared between all participants. As long as there is a benefit or a need for all participants, there does not have to be a reward. Maybe neither mining is required. The blockchain could use a different consent algorithm, like proof of authority.

Hope that helps.