Introducing MediBloc- The solution to a decentralized Medical DataBase on the BlockChain

Medical Practice is all about storytelling- a patient tells his/her story and a doctor writes it down with the morals of the story for another interested reader (Probably another medic)
@antigenx 2017

Medical history forms the ethos of practice, it requires an experienced medical personnel to dig around the circumstances surrounding a particular illness and come up with a tentative diagnosis for a better management of the patient. This was the traditional practice of medicine passed on from generation to generation. It didn’t change despite different contributions in medicine made by the Chinese, Indians, Greeks, Romans and even the Arabians. History still stood the test of time.

image

This detailed information is sometimes lost over time due to some unforeseen factors, leaving the patients at the mercy of another medic to start the questioning all over again leading to wastage of time and extra financial cost to run the necessary investigations to aid proper diagnosis.

If these records were easily accessible on the internet, every doctor could get access to them and skip the questioning session and everyone goes home happy, this would have been a win-win for both doctor and patients.

image

Looking at the patient folder, one would see a bold WRITING ‘CONFIDENTIAL- Not to be handled by the patient or their relatives’, this was the practice until recently when laws were made to allow access of medical records online.

Health and Safety Code section 123148 requires the healthcare professional who requested the test be performed to provide a copy of the results to the patient, if requested either orally or in writing. source

Sending out copies of medical information can get into the wrong hands due to human error breaching one of the ethics of the practice of medicine which is confidentiality. These data when in wrong hands could be used to harm the unsuspecting patient another problem the ethics of medicine tried to protect its patient. (Non-maleficence.)

In 2015, more than 112 million
health care records were breached just in the United States and annual financial loss is_ recorded to be over $6.2 Billion. source

image

What is mediBloc?

MediBloc has come with good news to both the patient and the doctor by enabling medical data to be available for the doctor, patient and research parties (after getting an approved consent from the patient).

MediBloc is a platform with a vision of decentralizing the medical data making it readily available. It won’t be surprising that mediBloc decided to the ethics of the medical profession in its data project.
• Autonomy of Data- the MediBloc Model gives the patient autonomy of data generated, where the patient has the right to decide who to allow access of his/her data being fully aware of the risk and benefits of his actions.

• Justice- MediBloc also tried to simulate the ‘Justice’ part of the ethics making data to be available for research (after the patient must have given consent to the app)

• Beneficence_- This is the most interesting part of the concept, as MediBloc leverage on this to provide a reward for the patients when they exchange their medical data for a token. The patient would have a reduced frequency of providing the same data over a long period of time.

• Non-maleficence- MediBloc would mitigate data fraud and the un-ethical un-authorized use of medical data ensuring maximum security of data at all times.

A cursory look at the mission statement says it all

Improve health care access and experience by redistributing value of personal healthcare data, Accelerating the world’s shift to private information decentralization. source

The MediBloc Platform would consist of three layers, Core Layer, Service Layer and Application Layer In other to actualize the mission statement.

• The Core Layer which is the first layer would form a network architecture for health database with a high-level security. Information generated on a daily basis would be overwhelming for the blockchain, thus only a hash of the information which would be linked to a private key would only be made available on the blockchain, while the remaining data would be stored off the blockchain.

• Service Layer- This is made up of two components EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and Connecting Applications. This service Layer would be able to interact freely with the other layers core and application layer in other to transact smart contracts with a reward of Medi Point or some med tokens.

• MediBloc Application Layer. This is the third layer which would allow third-party applications to access the data as mediBloc is an open source project.
  MediBloc is a decentralized app that is supported by Ethereum and Qtum (that will enable it to penetrate the Chinese market).

To ensure a product that has the following qualities
• Maximum security
• Highly Reliable
• High Level of Transparency
• Interoperability
• Highly Accessible

MediBloc would not allow a thoroughfare of traffic on the platform, there is an account base that would be generated for General Users ¸Health Care Provider (Medical practitioners’, institution) and data researchers ) with different level of authority for each user.

image

In Order to distinguish a health provider from other users, a health care provider credential system would be introduced to filter medical practitioners’, thereby introducing a ‘proof of certification’ to the system.

Activities on the mediBloc system would end users some medi Points with a high yield of peer-to-peer value transfer.

USER CASE.

A few years ago, as a medical officer, I had a Road Traffic Accident case, in which the patient presented un-conscious, and I was left to manage the patient with little or no information. How I managed to pull off information to manage the patient until today is a story for another day. I remember using true caller to get the patients Name, and then I looked up the name on popular social media to get to know his close acquaintances. I had a one on one chat with one of them that happened to be a close relative before I could get access to some vital information that would not be gotten from the blood work.

If there was a mechanism to get the patients’ medical history, time and energy would have been saved.

Another case scenario I remember was when I was a house officer, my consultant was doing a research about A Ten Year Review Of Ovarian Cancer In Enugu, South East Nigeria , and as the chief house officer, I was saddled with the responsibility of pulling down cases that related to the research from the medical records. I spent the whole week coming up with the expected data, but it was a very horrifying experience as the medical institution then (a Teaching Hospital) was still operating the traditional paperwork.

If MediBloc was in existence, a request would have been sent to those patients and they would have granted access, and a simple search query would have brought out all the data needed for that research with some exchange of media tokens by my consultant and the patients.

The Roadmap of The MediBloc Project reveals a completion of the target for the year 2017, MediBloc has successfully l released its API and SDK as described on the road Map in the month of May and would go ahead to launch an alpha version for testing. The Brain behind the MediBloc Platform Dr. Allen Wookyun Kho and Dr. Eunsol Lee have finally given hope to the field of medical research as this would allow bigger pharmaceutical companies and medical institutions to partner with the MediBloc Team. Some of the existing partners include. Hanyang University Medical Center, a renowned medical institution in Korea,Kyung Hee University Dental Hospital, the third largest dental hospital in Korea.

Still having doubts and want to read more aboutMediBloc? Check out, their website .

• If interested in how MediBloc works and its technical details, you will find useful information in the Whitepaper

• If you love to watch a video aboutMediBloc, this YoutubeVideo should come in handy for you.

• And if you want to get into contact with them, feel free to visit their Telegram, Twitter, Facebook.

• In case you still have a question about this project, feel free to drop a message and I will try to answer to the best of my knowledge

---

This is my entry for @originalworks writing contest

medibloc2018