My two year old daughter managed to fall off a chair and bang her head a couple of days ago. I was in the middle of a phone call with Kimmo, and had to hang up in order to check that she was okay. There was a bad bump on her head, and obviously she wasn’t very happy, but fortunately it looks like there was no concussion.

Today she developed a couple of black eyes; again, nothing to be alarmed about – one of my older kids went through exactly the same thing when we were living in Hervanta, and it’s a known side-effect of a bad bruise to the forehead. But then I realized, that I don’t know when or where the previous event happened.

I can work out when my daughter had her accident by looking at my phone records, but what about other significant medical events? When did I last have a tetanus booster? When did I last go to the pharmacy to get a prescription? Did I take my rhinitis nose spray last night? How many paracetamol tablets have I taken in the last year? Have I ever broken a bone?

I’ve no idea what the exact answer is to any of these questions, and although I could work out the answer to some of them by making an appointment with my doctor, I’m probably not going to. And yet, accurate medical data can mean the difference between life and death in some cases, and often you or the professionals don’t know in advance what data is going to be needed.

What if all this information could be quickly and easily reported to a medical blockchain, using my own private key so no one else could see it (except my doctor, if I authorize them), but I could retrieve it whenever I like, or more importantly – whenever it’s important? Each country could run its own medical blockchain and our mobile phones could log relevant stuff quickly and easily with one click. And because it’s blockchain, it can’t be hacked or tampered with subsequently, and with enough nodes running the chain it would always be available. Anywhere in the world.

Finland is well ahead of a lot of places in that our records are in an accessible database for all medical professionals to see, but you still can’t add your own data. Perhaps a blockchain is something that can help us all in this critical area. After all, without your health, what have you got?