Abstract
The importance of improving global health standards and promoting economic development cannot be underrated. Economies of the countries are directly impacted by the health of their citizens, their productivity, and healthcare spending. This chapter covers a broad range of topics related to global health, global economy, and digital identity; namely, the challenges of the nearly 3.5 billion people who lack essential healthcare services and the far-reaching economic benefits of bringing them into mainstream, the value of digital identity for an inclusive healthcare, how some countries have progressed in this direction to integrate digital identity model into their healthcare system, and what are the perils of the existing digital identity model in the healthcare world. Finally, the author makes a compelling argument for moving towards a decentralized and self-sovereign identity model as the necessary foundation for a robust patient-centric global healthcare model in the era of personalized medicine.
TopBackground
At a global level, there is a gulf between the quality of healthcare that exists and the quality of healthcare that is needed, to protect humanity from health and financial distress. What is needed is a deliberate and comprehensive global effort to improve the quality of care. Making pragmatic investments in global health can significantly improve people’s quality of life, protect against pandemics, and lead to large economic returns. Each year, poor health reduces global GDP by 15 percent (Prioritizing Health: A Prescription for Prosperity | McKinsey, 2020). Underinvestment in health systems is a major threat to global prosperity (Martin et al., 2012). The United Nation’s 2030 agenda for sustainable development to transform the world is a plan of action for people, the planet, and prosperity, calling all countries to collaboratively implement this plan (United Nations, 2020). Healthcare is a major engine of economic growth and calls for adequate investment in public health, especially in poor countries.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Decentralized Digital Identity (DDID): A new digital identity model that is a complete restructuring of the current centralized identity model, a trust framework in which identities are self-owned, and independent, and enables data exchange using distributed ledger technologies to afford privacy and secure transactions and ownership of personal data.
Web 3.0: Next phase of the evolution of the internet and built upon the core concepts of decentralization, openness, and greater user utility.
Digital Biomarkers (BM): Digital biomarkers are objective, quantifiable physiological and behavioral data, collected and measured using digital devices such as portables, wearables, implantable, or digestible. Collected data are used to explain, influence, and/or predict health outcomes.
Digital Twin: Virtual model that is the exact twin of a physical object or a system that spans its lifecycle, gets real-time data from its physical counterpart, and uses simulation, machine learning, and reasoning to support decision-making about the physical counterpart.
Verifiable Credential (VC): Verifiable credentials are digital certificates made by an issuer in a tamper-proof and privacy-preserving manner using digital signature technology.
Healthcare 4.0: Intelligent disease treatment involving a smart health care system, connected care, personalized medicine, and artificial intelligence.
Machine Learning (ML): Type of AI that enables self-learning from data and applies that learning without human intervention by identifying patterns in data, especially diverse and high-dimensional data. In this model, data is usually aggregated from several edge devices in a centralized server and trained.
Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP): ZKP is a privacy-preserving digital protocol that allows data to be verified without revealing that data.
Decentralized Identifiers (DID): Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) are a new type of identifier that enables verifiable, decentralized digital identity. They are based on the self-sovereign identity paradigm.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): An augmented human intelligence to accomplish tasks that neither humans nor machines can do on their own.
Verifiable Claim (VC): Verifiable claim is a statement about a subject. Claims are expressed as a subject-property-value relationship. For example, whether someone graduated from a particular university can be expressed as a claim. A credential is a set of one or more claims made by the same entity.
Personalized Medicine: Personalized medicine also known as precision medicine, is a new frontier for healthcare combining genomics, big data analytics, and population health.
Metaverse: The next generation internet, one that will take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and 5G network connectivity to create online environments that are more immersive, experiential, and interactive than what we have today.
Federated Learning (FL): Decentralized form of machine learning. Federated Learning trains central models on decentralized data, from their aggregated training results, without the data leaving their location.
Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI): Self-sovereign identity is a digital identity model that gives individuals control of their digital identities.