New platforms, new data, new problems and blockchain article:
https://medium.com/iryo-network/as-a-patient-i-hope-for-the-constant-improvement-of-the-healthcare-industry-e0371ba1f873While new digital health solutions, devices and platforms carry potentially meaningful data, they are often separate from institutional electronic health records. Sometimes for a good reason, if consumer applications are not clinically validated and additional data can bring more noise that signal.
In the States, where healthcare system is private, more market-driven than in Europe, medical institutions are leveraging from innovation and digital health solutions more. By encouraging their doctors to be creative, they have all the resources to create clinically validated apps and platforms. If these new solutions succeed, they create a new revenue stream to the medical institution. They can improve patient care and lower costs.
Increasing the quality of care is tightly connected to the data gathered from these institutions. If data formats are effectively used, data gathering and data analysis can lead to better treatment decisions. Proper data analysis will hopefully lead to crucial discoveries around the root causes, not just the triggers, of diseases. This will eventually speed up the time it takes to find cures for current and future diseases.
However, connectivity and interoperability among institutions and platforms is still far from an optimal state.
Blockchain solutions are offering new opportunities that can help address some of these issues. More than 40 projects utilizing blockchain technology in healthcare have been started in the last two years. Their ultimate goals are to assist in redefining access to healthcare, health insurance, efficient treatment, increasing transparency and protecting patient data.
“Innovation, when done right, will make technology invisible.”
As a former journalist and podcaster, I constantly research and follow how different medical experts and creative specialists around the globe think, how different healthcare systems work and how they approach innovation.
It is clear that there is no one size fits all solution to solving the issues related to healthcare IT. There are just too many varieties of healthcare systems, payment models, culture, patients and doctors. But one can always learn from best practices.
This thought — “Innovation, when done right, will make technology invisible,” stuck with me most this year during an interview with Rasu Shrestha, CIO of UPMC (University of Pittsburg Medical Center). It is a thought reflecting what is needed for doctors to reclaim time for their patients and patients to reclaim time to live. In some respects we are already there: ingestible, implantable, surroundable sensors and implantable drug release mechanisms are what allows chronic patients to forget about their disease.
IT in healthcare is at the moment usually an added layer to existing ways of working, consequently too often a source…
www.podbean.com Iryo
I was invited to join a new healthcare company, Iryo, during its inception in autumn of 2017. The idea of building healthcare IT with a better user experience was one that I could definitely relate to and fully support. After all; I will be stuck in the healthcare system on a regular basis for the rest of my life. Instead of complaining about it, I am motivated to be part of the solution.
Iryo aims to have a global impact, however, the aspect that inspired me most was the paradigm shift around a patient being able to leverage and manage their own medical data, thanks to blockchain technology and token economy.
In the Iryo system, you as a patient decide who will and who won’t have access to your medical data. If a researcher wants to use your data, you get incentivised to open the medical record through the use of tokens. Then you can use those tokens inside the Iryo network.