Guardtime, the first and only platform for ensuring the integrity of data and systems at industrial scale, today announced a partnership with the Estonian e-Health Authority to accelerate adoption of blockchain based transparency and auditability the lifecycle management for patient health care records.

Estonia has been at the forefront of innovation in digital society for the last 20 years and is the only country where a majority of citizens carry a PKI smart card providing access to over 1000 electronic government services that are actively used. Electronic patient records are a critical component of these services and by integrating Guardtime’s blockchain technology it becomes possible to provide an independent forensic-quality audit trail for the lifecycle of those patient records, making it impossible for anyone who gains access to those records to manipulate information and cover their tracks.

Estonian eHealth Foundation uses Oracle technology to process and store the patient records and Guardtime's KSI blockchain will be integrated at the Oracle database engine, providing increased security, transparency, auditability and governance for electronic systems and lifecycle management of patient records. KSI instrumented records will be irrefutable.

Mike Gault CEO of Guardtime commented: “Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has repeatedly pointed out the biggest threat in cyberspace is integrity, and in particular the integrity of patient health care records. We are proud to announce that Estonia is again leading the world in digital innovation. This level of transparency and auditability is a global first and with US health care fraud measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars every year, the Estonian model should provide a valuable template to dramatically reduce this fraud both for the US and the rest of the world.”

Margus Auväärt, Head of eHealth Foundation added: “Guardtime’s KSI blockchain technology enables us to easily reach the highest integrity levels for our systems and data, as mandated by ISKE, an Estonian cybersecurity standard modeled after BSI IT-Grundschutz by German Federal Office for Information Security. Furthermore, the unparalleled scale and frequency of the KSI blockchain give us the capability to maintain continuous real-time situational awareness into the integrity state of assets under our control, not required by any standards, but enabling us to react to any incidents immediately, before potentially larger-scale damages can occur."