Bruce Doll, assistant vice president for technology research and innovation at the Department of Defense’s Uniformed Services University, said the military health system should consider employing blockchain technology in tracking COVID-19 vaccine distribution, credentialing health providers and other use cases, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.
Doll said Wednesday at a virtual health IT conference that defense health agencies could use artificial intelligence and machine learning to help reduce the risk of introducing bad data into the distributed ledger technology.
“Right now, if you use blockchain, there’s a risk that the data introduced is bad data, and unfortunately, badly introduced into a blockchain can be bad data forever,” he said.
Doll said he believes leaders at the Defense Health Agency (DHA) and other DoD components should prioritize blockchain to further advance the technology.
“You can understand the whole technology evolves, and I think the phase it’s in currently remains one to be deliberately evaluated, before rolling out a pilot within the Military Health System,” Doll said.
