# 2.1 Current State of the Healthcare Data Ecosystem

Despite rapid digital transformation, the modern healthcare data ecosystem continues to face numerous structural issues. Patients, healthcare institutions, and research organizations experience inefficiencies and disconnections in data utilization, which lead to diminished service quality and delayed innovation in medical research.

**a. Data Silos**\
Patient medical records are fragmented across individual hospitals and clinics, making integrated data utilization difficult. For instance, when a patient visits a new hospital, existing records from previous hospitals are often not transmitted seamlessly. This results in unnecessary duplicate tests, wasting both time and resources for patients and medical institutions alike. Moreover, this fragmentation prevents healthcare providers from accessing comprehensive patient histories, hindering accurate diagnoses and treatments.

**b. Ownership and Privacy Issues**\
Currently, most healthcare data is owned by medical institutions, requiring patients to navigate complex procedures to access or utilize their data. This centralized structure limits patient autonomy while raising concerns about data misuse and unauthorized access. Patients frequently worry about the misuse or leakage of their data but lack the means to monitor or control its use.

**c. Lack of Data Reliability and Accessibility**\
Healthcare data often lacks standardization and verification, leading to diagnostic inaccuracies and compromising patient safety. Furthermore, healthcare research and innovation suffer due to limited access to high-quality data. Acquiring and verifying data consumes excessive time and resources, slowing the pace of vital initiatives such as drug development and clinical trials.
