MediBloc: Revolutionizing the healthcare data system

INTRODUCTION

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A couple of time, when must have experienced a situation where we were sick and some tests were carried out on us in the hospital, we later visited another hospital and same tests were repeated. This is so because one's tests in the previous hospital is not transferrable to a different hospital. Also, government regulations such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States considers patient's medical information highly classified and only the individual's medical institution or insurance company can have access to patient's medical information. In addition, there is the issue of lack of digitalization which further makes the exchange of medical data problematic. All these restrictions hinder healthcare providers and medical experts from giving the best healthcare service and conducting unnecessary and repeated tests takes time and incur more cost.

Medical data are valuable assets that holds vital information of patients and are sought after on increasing demand. In the past, efforts by corporations such as Blue Button Connector, Apple's Mobile Healthcare Application to gather and monetize medical data hit a brick wall due to its inability to meet the requirements for ideal healthcare information system such as security, reliability and transparency.

The scope of blockchain technology goes beyond the management of digital currencies. One of the promising features of blockchain technology is the personalised control that a decentralized system of record-keeping can offer users while ensuring data integrity and maximum security. Due to the endless potentials blockchain technology has to offer, Dr Allen Wookyun Kho and Eunsol Lee created an ideal healthcare information system using blockchain technology called MediBloc to address the current underlined problems plaguing medical record systems.

WHAT IS MEDIBLOC?

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MediBloc is an open source healthcare data platform built on the blockchain that gives individuals complete control of their medical data. It's a compilation of complete indexed history of all patient information. MediBloc safely secures scatter data on timely basis, cinches accurate and comprehensive data relating to patients' health from various medical institutions. These data could be collected from devices such as smart phones, patient's wearables, documents, EMRs etc. Individuals have full access and control over their data and may choose to give permission to private corporations, medical and research institutions to make use of these data in conducting studies and are incentivized with MED currency in return. There are three accounts that can be created on the MediBloc platform; general users, healthcare providers (medical practitioners, institutions) and data researchers (medical researchers, healthcare apps/services), and these accounts have different authority and roles.

UNIQUE FEATURES OF MEDIBLOC

• SECURITY: Individual medical data of current medical institutions are easily prone to hacking or could easily be leaked mistakenly by an employer. MediBloc hopes to prevent this and reduce access to private health information by giving the user right over his/her account. The individual will have authority to access, decrypt and collect all health information. This will minimize the collection of private health data and reduce the risk of leakage.

• RELIABILITY: Healthcare data of individuals are kept safe in a decentralized storage and in other to prevent data loss, MediBloc will routinely generates backups. This will make it entirely impossible for users to delete, modify or mar the integrity and reliability of the data stored on MediBloc. It will verify the authenticity of the certification of medical practitioners through healthcare provider's credential system and will keep history of the individual's medical data accessed by health practitioners and of course after getting consent from the individual.

• HIGH LEVEL OF TRANSPARENCY: In current healthcare system, it is impossible to know who have access to individual's medical data. MediBloc will record the activities of those who write, read and access the individual's information on the blockchain as well as the time, location and purpose the accessed information was used for.

• HIGH INTEROPERABILITY: MediBloc healthcare data platform will support the transfer of standardized record formats such as medical images, genetic information and also non standardized formats like medical records, laboratory results, tests results etc. In an effort to enhance interoperability, MediBloc plans to provide API/SDK for diverse formats starting with HK7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Record) and will also allow developers to develop codes supporting other formats.

• HIGH ACCESSIBILITY: In MediBloc, the healthcare data are stored in a decentralized database that can be easily accessed by users from any part of the world by the use of the internet.

• PATIENT CENTERED HEALTHCARE INFORMATION SYSTEM: MediBloc decentralized blockchain will not only be able to store data produced by the individual's medical institution but will also be able to collectively store Patient Generated Health Record (PGHR). Information gotten outside the hospital as well as data recorded by patients can all be stored on MediBloc.

BENEFITS OF MEDIBLOC

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• PROPER HEALTHCARE DELIVERY: MediBloc gives timely access to data that healthcare professionals can use to make crucial diagnosis and deliver appropriate treatments to patients.

• PERSONAL HEALTH REPORT: Patients can be able to know individual health conditions and keep complete record of medical history and medical procedures that took place in the hospital as well as the prescribed drugs, dosage and side effects. Patients can compare previous health condition to the present and decides which procedure and medication best suit him/her.

• BILLING AND INSURANCE CLAIM: Billing and claim management is the process through which filing and processing of medical claims related to patient diagnosis, treatments and medications is done. Many institutions have fallen victim to data breaches where patient files are compromised leading to medical insurance fraud, theft and larceny. With MediBloc, it will be possible to thwart a good majority of these instances. Through smart contract after treatment, medical data delivered through MediBloc will automatically be billed to the patient's insurance plan.

• P2P HEALTH DATA MARKET: MediBloc offers patients the opportunity to exchange healthcare data with medical researchers, institutions, companies etc. Accurate data relating to patient's health is made available to medical practitioners for research or studies. Through this, MediBloc will return the rights and monetized benefits by big institutions back to the consumers.

• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Advancement in AI depends on the quality and quantity of the data which MediBloc can guarantee. Developers will be given the opportunity to access quality data on this platform which will enable them to create bots for patient's personalized care.

• CLINICAL TRIALS: MediBloc smart contract allows researchers and medical practitioners to have access to research data from any part of the world at anytime. It provides medical research institutes and pharmaceutical companies the opportunity to screen patients through their health data. Researchers can find the subjects that meet his or her desired condition and obtain data needed to conduct research.

• TELEMEDICINE: Through MediBloc, patients will be able to connect with their desired practitioner and receive medical service 24 hours anywhere around the globe.

• SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICES (SNS): MediBloc hopes to promote social networking on the platform by creating communities for patients especially those with rare diseases, so that patients with the same kind of disease can share information and establish relationship with each other. Also, medical providers and researchers interested in the disease can engage the community.
  

PARTNERSHIP

Medibloc has form strategic partnerships with large medical institutions; Hanyang University Medical Center, Kyung Hee University Dental Hospital, Oracle Aesthetic Clinic and Deloitte, a global financial and consulting giant. This partnerships is to ensure that MediBloc's technology reach out to a vast majority of people the moment it hits the ground running.

CONCLUSION MediBloc is revolutionary and opens the door to a lot of opportunities. If implemented in the healthcare industry, it has the potential to deliver quality healthcare to users, provide accurate data to researchers and streamlined medical record keeping, tackle billing, medical insurance fraud and a lot more.

More Information & Resources:
MediBloc Website
MediBloc WhitePaper (ENG)
MediBloc FAQ
MediBloc About
MediBloc Medium
MediBloc Twitter
MediBloc Facebook
MediBloc Github
MediBloc Telegram

This is an entry to @originalworks contest sponsored by MediBloc, you can enter here to participate.

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