Blockchain Verification, Traceability and Ethics at Healthcare Unblocked 2018

Fintech News

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Healthcare Unblocked, held at Prospero House in London on Friday, is Europe’s first public event fully dedicated to explaining, understanding and pursuing the potential of blockchain technology to deliver healthcare innovation. 

Highlights of the event included an interview with BioLife’s Serena Yin by organiser, and Fintech Times contributor, Helen Disney, a lively panel focussed on blockchain applications in healthcare and a presentation by Solve.Care’s Pradeep Goel.

Healthcare Unblocked
(Healthcare Unblocked organiser Helen Disney Interviews Serena Yin of BioLife)

BioLife’s Serena Yin set the scene for the day by adeptly summarising the sheer scope of potential that recent technological developments could have in solving some of the most pressing issues which face patients and healthcare providers today. Taking her native China as a focal point, Yin detailed for Helen Disney the ways in which BioLife is using artificial intelligence, the ‘Internet of Things’, machine learning and the blockchain to provide innovative new approaches to the nation’s medical practices. Yin argued that issues surrounding the verification of healthcare providers and the traceability of medical supplies could be all but eliminated by the products and services being developed on BioLife’s platform. She was also keen to emphasise where the fledging enterprise’s priorities lie;

“[BioLife] isn’t a blockchain project, it’s a healthcare solution”

The panel that followed brought together five different voices from around the industry, including two doctors and a physiotherapist, and tackled thorny ethical issues raised by the monetisation of medical data as well as the blockchain’s suitability to protect said information.

(L-R: Robert Learney (Digital Catapult), Dr Suhail Chughai (MedicalCity), Mohammed Tayeb (MedicalChain), Elizabeth Chee (HIT Foundation), Dr Manreet Nijjar (Truu) and Aman Quadri (Amsys))

Aman Quadri, CEO of Amsys was refreshingly honest regarding the less edifying side of commercial data handling, comparing big data to crude oil and citing that whilst big insurers and pharmaceutical companies are seeking out, “a critical mass of data” serious grey areas still exist over the ownership of personal records. Does the patient own information relating to their medical well-being, or does ownership reside with the keeper of the record, i.e. the provider? The line becomes increasingly blurred with the inclusion of blockchain technology. In theory, every individual could have complete control over their own records and therefore grant access to them in exchange for tokens or services. This, in turn, could give rise to a macabre micro-economy in which those with the most numerous or complicated conditions would have the most lucrative data to barter with.

Dr Suhail Chughtai, Director of MedicalCity, was quick to pour cold water on this bold new vision of a future where patients leverage their records for care and incentives when he exclaimed;

“If you’re being given something for free, then you’re the product!”

(Solve.Care Foundation CEO, Pradeep Goel)

Pradeep Goel took to the stage next and brought proceedings right back down to earth, what interests the Solve.Care founder and CEO is demonstrable real-life utility. As the physician turned tech entrepreneur told the Fintech Times in a recent exclusive;

“We started with only a few use-cases – eligibility, enrolment, billing, payment, and now we have about 24 use-cases in flight. I’ve always come from a view of making healthcare easier to access, easier to manage and easier to pay for, and now we’re entering the realm of easier to measure and instant rewards based on result, instead of just paying for services rendered. We are also building very innovative patient engagement cards like ‘How Are You Feeling Today?’, which is a card that lets patients form a personal network with their family, friends, concerned colleagues, doctors, specialists, and other care givers and providers, all of whom can keep real-time tabs on how you’re doing; post-surgery, post-accident, chronic disease, and other types of health episodes.”

Last Week Tonight’s host, John Oliver once quipped that blockchain technology combines everything you don’t know about money with everything you don’t know about computers. Well, having had my horizons broadened to breaking point by Unblocked’s panels and speakers, I can confidently conclude that my understanding of blockchain tech now also comprises of everything I don’t know about healthcare as well…

The post Blockchain Verification, Traceability and Ethics at Healthcare Unblocked 2018 appeared first on The Fintech Times.

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