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Peer-to-peer file sharing technology could help save lives by giving doctors better access to patient information.
At least 50,000 deaths each year are the result of medical errors linked to physicians not having access to information they need to care for their patients, according to a report by the US National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine.
"Peer-to-peer technology will allow physicians, clinicians and healthcare organisations to assemble and securely access entire sets of medical information about an entire set of people," said Dr. David Brailer, physician and CEO of on-line health management CareScience. His company began development of its "CareScience Care Data Exchange" in November 1999.
P2P technology allows users to transfer data securely from one computer to another. P2P is also less expensive than central server-based systems because it provides an interface that allows people to share information stored on individual computers and networks. The most popular application of peer-to-peer technology to date is Napster, the music file sharing site.
Easy and reliable access to complete information is the ultimate goal of the healthcare industry because so many errors and so many unnecessary treatments are driven by inaccurate or unavailable information, said Dr. Brailer.
CareScience chose P2P technology specifically because it allows users to "own" their own data while also sharing it, explained Dr. Brailer. Furthermore, CareScience's P2P network does not have any scalability problems, unlike many other P2P networks, he added.
The Care Data Exchange ensures that no single exchange or computer that uses the system is completely responsible for all data transactions, said Dr. Brailer. However, each exchange has open access to all other exchanges, he added.
P2P could solve an enormous problem, according to Vernon Elden, community liaison at Richmond Memorial Hospital.
"After it is proven, the adoption curve is huge and it changes the very nature of the problem so radically that the old way of doing things becomes instantly obsolete," said Elden.
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