AlphaPatient: Real-time analytics on global medical care data

[alphapatient]

I would like to share with you that our company has created a platform that can be helpful in addressing the current Covid-19 scenario.

In order for this platform to succeed in adoption it is vital to be free for use by medical institutions and patients. For this reason, we have started an online funding campaign on our website https://alphapatient.org. Funders will receive tokens in exchange that forms the currency for requesting real-time dashboards.

AlphaPatient’s goal is to provide an alternative where a person owns their own medical data and provides access to a clinician when needed. The clinicians update the medical record when care is given. This increases data accuracy, data availability, and enables real time analytics on a global scale to address current and future medical challenges.
“Although every nation has a different healthcare system, all nations use health data standards. Countries and territories are at different stages of adoption and implementation of these standards. Thus, harmonization is crucial in promoting the interoperability of electronic health records (EHRs) and empowering patients with their data across the globe.”
Global Digital Health Partnership (2019)

The challenges AlphaPatient faced were the following:

•   Each country has their own set of institutional regulations when dealing with the storing and accessibility of a patient’s personal data.
•   Economic incentives that do not encourage data exchange outside the existing geographical systems.
•   Lack of universal adoption of standards-based EHRs
•   Challenges managing coordinated action among, and across multiple organizations.
•   Variation in infrastructure capacity in low income areas or third world countries

How AlphaPatient addressed these challenges:
•   The personal details of a patient remain managed by the medical institution within a country.
•   Utilized blockchain technology to store, and access medical data during care delivery globally.

By keeping the storage of personal details within the databases of each country, AlphaPatient abides by all global institutional regulations, and enables the usage of blockchain technology to store medical care transactions as well as provide statistics real time.

In doing so, real-time analytics can be done on a global scale to not only track emerging trends, but also stay in control of the success rates of medical intervention.

I hope that I have given you enough information for you to see the benefit of our platform and consider contributing to our funding goal to speed up adoption.

Regards,
Alex de Wit
CEO AlphaPatient

[hugeblack]

#In order for this platform to succeed in adoption it is vital to be free for use by medical institutions and patients. For this reason, we have started an online funding campaign on our website https://alphapatient.org. Funders will receive tokens in exchange that forms the currency for requesting real-time dashboards.

It does not make a difference, COVID-19 pandemic represents a global crisis and I do not think that many medical institutions will be satisfied with the use of untested sites or solutions.
Your idea will be safe, but it needs more details. How to use a blockchain? Blockchain use is not considered effective in many medical services, it is an open platform for everyone and everyone can verify identity.

Also, the idea of selling tokens in order to get money does not seem attractive, many ICOs offers are not legal in many countries, and you need sufficient funding to prove what you can offer without asking for financing.

[alphapatient]

Thank you for the valuable feedback.

I would like to provide a bit more insight here. The system we have built uses blockchain in a select fashion true. Each patient has a wallet to start with. Following this each country has a public database of registered health professionals, they have a wallet on a different blockchain. When a transactions occurs, only a health professional can make a transaction to a patients' record, hereby you can trace the creator of the content when needed. In order to identify a patient the first transactions to their wallet contains a checksum of their identification number, where they can always be verified in the future, but not reverse-engineered. In order to keep the data secure it runs on a private network with nodes running at only medical practices or hospitals. The data is exposed through a cloud API that handles the authentication and requests.

Blockchain was utilized for exactly the reason of bridging the gap of established medical systems and to create a platform where limited data can be shared in a select manner. Practices could chose to only share covid-19 details, or more information on other medical scenario's. We cannot take on existing geographical incentives and it is also not the intention, instead to provide an effective way to interface our platform with existing systems to expose datasets for a wider reach. Imagine how many people are currently processing data to get to the numbers, and even then the numbers sometimes are not reliable. If you can capture this at the lowest granularity level, and automated, quicker responses or decision making could be made.

The project has been run by private funding so far and I understand your point about the mechanism we have chosen. Because the system crosses borders we have been unsuccessful in finding an angel investor and we opted to provide tokens as a utility to generate value out of the platform to make it free for medical professionals to use.

If you have recommendations on how we could do this differently or improve upon I would like to hear your opinion on this further.

[hugeblack]

The strength of the blockchain lies in providing transparency and not modifying data except with the consent of all network members. Both features are important in financial systems, but they have no benefit in verifying medical records.
For example, how will you determine which health professionals can modify the data? How will you ensure that you do not attempt to change data with the longer chain? Will the second party need to download the entire blockchain or must he download SPV clients?

Until now, I do not see a problem that can be solved by traditional systems, and the blockchain can solve it perfectly. Perhaps if you clarify the blueprints or whitepaper in your project, we may find some advantages, but it will not suffice for countries and companies to use them.

Try solving the problem with some solutions, and you will find it less expensive than solving it through Blockchain

[alphapatient]

Thank you once again for your feedback on this. Your questions on data accessibility and updating has been solved through a custom gateway but I understand where your questions are coming from.

I still strongly believe in the benefit of using blockchain for a supply chain of medical care data, it bridges a gap regarding institutional regulations that I cannot see being done by traditional software owned by a single party.

Rather than spend time to provide the blueprints (and arguably I am a newbie in blockchain space compared to others) we would rather finalize the beta trial and open up the system so it can speak for itself.

Thank you for you time on this and looking forward to proving you wrong :-)