Beyond serving as an emergency medicine physician in New York, Leah Houston, MD, is the founder of the Humanitarian Physician Empowerment community — HPEC.IO — a blockchain tool that is designed to help physicians and health systems.
In an interview with The National Herald, Dr. Houston discusses her support of the decentralized ledger and its potential.
Dr. Houston helped right a chapter in a blockchain and healthcare textbook titled Blockchain in Healthcare: Innovations that Empower Patients, Connect Professionals and Improve Care. The book was published by the Health Information and Management Systems Society.
In her chapter, Dr. Houston elaborates on identifying solutions for rising healthcare costs. Blockchain being one of them. She highlights the importance of identifying and organizing all players in the healthcare ecosystem to create solutions.
Different solutions, such as blockchain, will also help physicians eliminate waste. In turn, this will reduce healthcare costs and time-consuming tasks that sometimes cause physician burnout, Dr. Houston said.
Regarding the application of blockchain in healthcare, Dr. Houston said it "has the ability to alleviate some of the most pressing issues." The technology can be used to improve price transparency, cut administrative waste, and privacy and security concerns, Dr. Houston said.