Tag: health policy

Blockchain and the New Economics of Healthcare

With Darcy W E Allen, Anastasia Pochesneva and Jason Potts

Abstract: In this paper we outline the economics of healthcare as a problem of coordinating data and examine how blockchain technology might be applied as new economic infrastructure to govern those data rights. We argue that blockchain as a technology of trust pushes the economic organisation of healthcare data away from large, centralised hierarchical organisation towards decentralised, emergent platform organisation. The fundamental problem in healthcare is the coordination and governance of information around decision making (e.g. patient records, licensing of professionals, medical trial data, supply chains). The new economics of healthcare emphasises how this information is governed (e.g. through firms, governments, markets, blockchains) and how the most effective governance changes through time as new technologies of trust are developed. We examine the potential of blockchain as new healthcare data infrastructure (including ensuring the integrity of pharmaceuticals and devices, medical records and data markets). Our view is that blockchain fundamentally shifts healthcare data property rights away from centralised third parties (e.g. hospitals, companies, governments) towards decentralised data property rights held by individual patients. The future platform-based healthcare ecosystem will act as the foundational institutional infrastructure for new competitive solutions to healthcare problems (powered up through other technologies such as the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence), helping to solve a growing healthcare productivity crisis.

Available at SSRN

The Impact and Cost of Health Sector Regulation

With Mikayla Novak and Tim Wilson

Executive Summary

  • The demands on Australia’s health care sector will increase considerably as the Australian population ages.
  • The regulatory burden on health care professionals is increasing and is coming at the expense of fulfilling their primary purpose of providing health care services.
  • Health care providers may be required to liaise with up to 100 health care regulators with nearly 80 commonwealth regulators and between 15 and 20 in each state.
  • There are now more than 22,600 pages of combined state and federal legislation across 305 different Acts of Parliament covering the health sector.
  • There are unnecessary disparities in regulation for health care providers between States which cause confusion and increase the barriers to establishing new health care facilities.
  • The cost of regulation is rising rapidly. For example, the estimated compliance burden on general practice for enhanced primary care has grown by nearly 900 per cent between 2002-02 and 2007-08.
  • General Practitioners are becoming the interface for approval for Australians to access other government services such as welfare and support services draining their time to provide health care.
  • Licensing arrangements for different health care facilities from state to state add confusion to the capacity for new and existing health care providers to operate across the country.
  • The pharmaceuticals industry is one of the most heavily regulated industries in Australia and faces annual costs of at least $89 million to receive regulatory approval for sale. Much of this cost is duplicating work to seek regulatory approval already commenced or resolved overseas.
  • The average time frame for regulatory approval for a new medicine can be as high as 160 days resulting in the slower introduction of life saving or extending medicines.
  • The most effective way to decrease private health insurance premiums is not government regulation, but competition in health insurance products.
    Australia’s health care needs significant regulatory reform to ensure it can deliver the services expected of it with an ageing population.

Available in PDF here.