Insurance companies plan to use blockchain to share customers' medical data

Each player has to know whether particular claims have been received and paid by other companies, and if the customer has been flagged for fraud or violations before

A 19-member consortium of life insurance companies in India is looking at using blockchain technology to share customers’ medical records amongst each other — securely and with the consent of customers. There is also a plan to employ the technology to bring in effective fraud management. And the insurers have roped in IT firms IBM and Cognizant to help them build the solutions.

Blockchain, the newest buzzword in technology, is an encrypted digital database containing information (such as records of financial transactions) that can be simultaneously used and shared within a large network. It is this technology that India’s leading private