Change Healthcare, a Nashville, Tenn.-based health IT company, pledged to support blockchain transactions on its network by the end of the year.
Neil de Crescenzo, CEO of Change Healthcare, announced the project Sept. 25 during his keynote address at the Distributed: Health 2017 conference in Nashville. To develop the technology, he noted Change Healthcare is collaborating with customers and organizations such as The Linux Foundation's Hyperledger project, an open-source, cross-industry effort to advance blockchain.
Change Healthcare will use Hyperledger Fabric 1.0, a blockchain framework Hyperledger released in July as the foundation for its blockchain application. Once the application goes live, providers and payers on the Change Healthcare Intelligent Healthcare Network will have the option to use blockchain for claims processing and secure payment transactions without developing additional codes or interfaces.
The company's Intelligent Healthcare Network already processes 12 billion healthcare transactions, covering more than $2 trillion in claims each year, according to Change Healthcare.
"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," Mr. de Crescenzo said.