NFTs Could Grant Patients Control Over Medical Data

Using Smart Contract technology, NFTs could be utilized for the purpose of giving medical patients full control of their medical data. NFTs will allow them to set who gets access to these and where the data would be used if ever they are to decide for it. 

Marielle Gross, an academic at the University of Pittsburgh who studies technology and women’s health care, expressed in an interview with Scientific American: “There‘s really no good reason, morally speaking, why patients aren‘t the owners of their own samples and the derivatives thereof,”

Medical Ethicists agree that NFTs could grant control over their medical data, letting them track biological samples that were taken from them.

Medical information is digitized in Electronic Health Records (EHR). Apart from physicians, medical researchers and companies are buying anonymized data for a number of medical purposes. This benefits only a few companies that control access to EHRs and does not give patients information of who has their data.

NFTs will act as a gatekeeper for a patient's data. It will track who requested access, who was granted access, and when these took place. Patients could also know how their data will be used and even set the parameters on who will be given access. All these actions are made public.