Companies are purchasing large, anonymized data sets of personal health information outside patient awareness.

For patients, owning an NFT of their medical data would be like creating a sentry to guard that personal information. The NFT would act as a gatekeeper, tracking who requested access, who was granted access, and when—and record all those actions publicly.

The NFT would be linked to smart contracts that would serve as if/then statements that can pre-decide how an item gets used. Instead of making a decision every time someone wants to use the data, patients can create parameters —-specifying they only want to give access to their doctor, and the smart contract automates that decision.