Change Healthcare announces blockchain solution for healthcare

Change Healthcare, one of the largest independent healthcare IT companies in the U.S., has announced the launch of a blockchain solution for healthcare.

Announced at the Distributed: Health 2017 conference, the Change Healthcare Intelligent Healthcare Network will support blockchain transactions by the end of th year. The enterprise-scaled solution hopes to improve revenue cycle efficiency, real-time analytics, reduce costs and develop new services.

“We are excited to work alongside our customers and partners to make blockchain real in healthcare,” said Change Healthcare CEO Neil de Crescenzo. “As today’s healthcare system becomes more value-based, it’s essential that we aggressively and pervasively introduce new technologies into healthcare at scale—whether they leverage blockchain, artificial intelligence, or other emerging capabilities with the potential to improve outcomes and efficiencies. We are initially introducing blockchain technology to create a distributed ledger that makes claims processing and secure payment transactions work more efficiently and cost effectively for all healthcare stakeholders.”

Change Healthcare is set to employ Hyperledger Fabric 1.0, an open source blockchain framework, as the foundation for blockchain application development. As a member of the Hyperledger Governing Board, Change Healthcare will contribute code to the open source community to improve blockchain applications for healthcare industries.

“Change Healthcare is uniquely positioned to lead blockchain innovation for healthcare, and we are excited to participate in this transformative undertaking with them,” said Brian Behlendorf, executive director of Hyperledger. “With its security, transparency of transactions, and ability for all stakeholders to access the same information, blockchain technology has potential to increase payment accuracy and revenue velocity, which will benefit payers, providers, and consumers themselves.”