17th Feb 2018, HongKong, MD Tokens (
www.mdtokens.com)
The healthcare industry is a challenge in most countries as rising health care costs and aging populations cause a strain. The size of the industry is booming in Asia and the infrastructure is struggling to catch up. The personal healthcare costs are largely out of pocket while corporates and insurers cover hospitalisation costs. The outpatient healthcare services and rising chronic diseases are burden to households and will cause a socio-economic challenge.
Digital health shows a great promise to help with care co-ordination, improving access to care and improving health literacy. The challenges in adoption is seen with providers and hospital groups that are only slowly implementing technology and controlling the data within own proprietary systems. Data interoperability and ownership of personal health record are challenges that governments and medical systems have yet to tackle.
Blockchain technology and smart contracts may have the answer to these problems. MD Tokens Ltd aims to use an existing successful digital health platform in Asia, to leverage the technology mentioned in this whitepaper and issue a Token system to encourage the development of the healthcare ecosystem which is secure, transparent and provides accountable care.
Problem to be solved
1) Lack of care co-ordination - The key challenge we have identified is lack of transparency and patients being shuffled through a healthcare system that they do not understand. Taking a preventive health and managing chronic diseases in outpatient settings should be a key focus. However, with clinics that are not co-ordinating care due to their lack of resources, patients are lost in the random referrals and repeat investigations with lost data.
2) Siloed Data in multiple locations across the provider locations, labs, pharmacies make it difficult to build a consistent patient experience. Knowledge of past medical conditions becomes something patients should be able to articulate themselves. There is a knowledge gap and lack of consistency in treatment across various groups.
3) Increasing cost of care and lack of value based treatment protocols makes healthcare inefficient. Better vertical integration for the key stakeholders and payor lead managed care systems could help contain out of pocket expenses. Outpatient care today has many deductibles from insurers and it is increasingly becoming consumer based care. Increasing awareness and health literacy would be key aspects as well.8
