Taylor & Francis Group

David Metcalf

Vikram Dhillon

Max Hooper

John Bass

Alex Cahana

Blockchain technology is poised to revolutionize more than just payment and crypto-currency. Many vertical industries will be reshaped by the new trusted data models enabled and inspired by the blockchain - healthcare is no exception. In fact, healthcare may hold the greatest opportunities for meaningful use of the technology. Early pioneers have explored some of the first use cases for medical payments, electronic health records, HIPAA/data privacy, drug counterfeiting, and credentialing of healthcare professionals. We have only begun to scratch the surface in how to automate the complexities of today's healthcare systems and design new systems which focus on trust, transparency and the alignment of incentives. Metcalf, Bass, Dhillon, and Hooper have curated a collection of examples based on the fundamentals of blockchain that build upon the early successes and examples that point to the future. After a brief introduction to bitcoin, blockchain and the protocols available, a getting-started guide is presented specific to health and healthcare. The authors discuss the complexities and possibilities of smart contracts and some of the early consortia that are exploring the possibilities. Examples and use cases are found throughout the book, with specific sections that cover the more sophisticated and far-reaching examples which have the potential to scale at the industry-level. In addition, a discussion of integrating blockchain technology into other advanced healthcare trends and IT systems - such as telemedicine, artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things, value-based payments, patient engagement solutions, big data solutions, medical tourism, and precision medicine/genetic therapies among many others are presented. The final section provides a glimpse into the future using blockchain technology and examples of research projects that are still in labs across the globe. The appendices may prove particularly useful for additional details on how to get started, including resources and organizations specifically focusing on blockchain and distributed ledger solutions.

Innovations That Empower Patients, Connect Professionals and Improve Care

Blockchain in Healthcare

Work with blockchain and understand its potential application beyond cryptocurrencies in the domains of healthcare, Internet of Things, finance, decentralized organizations, and open science. Featuring case studies and practical insights generated from a start-up spun off from the author’s own lab, this book covers a unique mix of topics not found in others and offers insight into how to overcome real hurdles that arise as the market and consumers grow accustomed to blockchain based start-ups. You'll start with a review of the historical origins of blockchain and explore the basic cryptography needed to make the blockchain work for Bitcoin. You will then learn about the technical advancements made in the surrounded ecosystem: the Ethereum virtual machine, Solidity, Colored Coins, the Hyperledger Project, Blockchain-as-a-service offered through IBM, Microsoft and more. This book looks at the consequences of machine-to-machine transactions using the blockchain socially, technologically, economically and politically. Blockchain Enabled Applications provides you with a clear perspective of the ecosystem that has developed around the blockchain and the various industries it has penetrated. What You’ll Learn Implement the code-base from Fabric and Sawtooth, two open source blockchain-efforts being developed under the Hyperledger Project Evaluate the benefits of integrating blockchain with emerging technologies, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence in the cloud Use the practical insights provided by the case studies to your own projects or start-up ideas Set up a development environment to compile and manage projects Who This Book Is For Developers who are interested in learning about the blockchain as a data-structure, the recent advancements being made and how to implement the code-base. Decision makers within large corporations (product managers, directors or CIO level executives) interested in implementing the blockchain who need more practical insights and not just theory.

Understand the Blockchain Ecosystem and How to Make it Work for You

Blockchain Enabled Applications

Learn to create your own blog using the Jekyll static site generator. You’ll start with a simple template, add new features to it, automate any maintenance, attach social sharing, and begin writing. By the end of Creating Blogs with Jekyll, you will be able to create custom blogs with Jekyll, update the content with ease, and reach out to your readers with minimal effort. Because you've built your blog yourself, you'll know exactly how each component works, and you won’t be dependent on an admin panel to maintain it. Creating Blogs with Jekyll equips you with the knowledge to create an elegantly designed blog and scale it to capture more readers. Recapture the magic of writing by creating great content and use an easy workflow in Jekyll to maintain it for blogging. Do new things and write about them in style with Jekyll. Takes you through building a fully functional blog from scratch using Jekyll Provides a fun way to work on a side-project and integrate cutting edge web technologies Teaches you how to update and maintain your awesome blog Jekyll is a simple, secure and very low maintenance blog engine that converts naturally written content in markdown into a beautiful and minimal blog. It allows you to focus on content creation and expressing yourself instead of spending all your time updating the plugins and maintaining the database. Jekyll does not rely on a database as a backend so your blog will be far more secure and reliable than any traditional blogging engines such as WordPress. We live in a day and age where short attention spans make it very difficult to expose a reader to interesting content. What better way to capture a reader's attention and retain viewers by captivating them by your own unique style and taste? Jekyll allows the content to shine with minimal distractions and a greater focus on the content and easy sharing of the content. What You'll Learn Choose a base theme appropriate for your style and development Integrate various web technologies that will work well together and enhance your blog Automate social sharing components and comments workflow Make adjustments to themes, views and styles of blog posts Update any of the modular components of the blog and integrate new technologies Implement Jekyll and deploying static websites for future projects Who This Book Is For The developer who is ready to move beyond the complexities of maintaining a content management system by creating their own unique blog in their own style. It’s for the project manager tired of spending all their time editing their blog on the admin panel and updating the content management system. Creating Blogs with Jekyll is an excellent choice for new developers to start blogging because of the simplicity of Jekyll’s theming layer and writing workflow. It’s an excellent choice for the web developer wanting to build their blog from scratch and expand their knowledge of higher level web technologies.

Vikram Dhillon

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