EMIS Group acquires healthcare blockchain business
- 8 November 2018
Primary care IT system provider EMIS has announced a £2.5 million acquisition of a UK business specialising in the use of blockchain in healthcare.
Dovetail Lab creates software designed to give patients full control of their healthcare records, delivering secure exchange of data between different health services and new digital technologies involved in patient care.
In March 2018, Dovetail announced it was partnering up with Patients Know Best to offer shared virtual medical records to people with diabetes.
EMIS Group is acquiring an initial 90% shareholding in the company, with existing Dovetail Lab shareholders having the remaining 10%.
Andy Thorburn, CEO of EMIS Group, said: “Dovetail Lab is widely regarded as one of the leading healthcare blockchain businesses in the UK, that is driving innovation across the sector.
“The business has already launched a successful pilot of its software within the NHS, giving patients access, visibility and control over their health data using explicit and informed consent to drive data sharing across all health and care settings.
“The potential applications for blockchain technology in the UK healthcare sector are significant and we look forward to working with the new team to explore these.”
EMIS has also announced it has acquired the outstanding 21.1% minority stake in its subsidiary Rx, which trades as EMIS Health Community Pharmacy, giving the group 100% control of the business.
EMIS Health Community Pharmacy provides clinical software for pharmacists.
Thorburn said: “Rx has been an important contributor to EMIS Group since 2010 and Phoenix a valued partner, co-investor and customer throughout that period. We are pleased to have come to this agreement and to consolidate full control of Rx.”
3 Comments
I’d bet any consent given by patients is off-chain, meaning that the Blockchain value-add is simply being a ledger too confirm that consent was granted.
Good luck trawling back through the chain to find consent if the patient contests that they gave it. I’d also bet they maintain a standard database audit log of that too…
Blockchain is not useful for most scenerios. It’s slower than a system where you already maintain trust relationships. The new NHS identity system is the perfect example. You have an app, you want to authenticate the user, you use the NHS identity API and you trust them to tell the truth when they verify a user’s credentials…
BC has its uses, but not at small scale – inter-country identity, global currencies, global asset ownership (patents, trademarks, financial instruments, etc.) are all great uses, but consent for my health record? A system that will have maybe a couple of million transactions a year? Definitely not.
Quality understanding of tech there, EMIS…
Let’s hope they make a better job of it than some of their other acquisitions!
Very Interesting.
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