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Using Telehealth as a Model for Blockchain HIT Adoption
Brennan Bennett
Editor’s note: This month, Telehealth and Medicine Today brings to its readers the
second in a series authored by Brennan Bennett on telehealth and blockchain
technology. In this article, the focus is on their shared core philosophy of
empowering the individual.
Telemedicine and blockchain technology share a core philosophy of empowering the
individual. Blockchain solutions that focus on empowering patients and enhancing
the workflows for the providers who treat them continue to make big headlines, as
does enterprise investment and adoption of telehealth. Both models focus on direct-
to-consumer health services, with a personalized care experience designed from the
ground up to save time and money for everyone involved. The typical binding factor
between the telehealth and HIT (health information technology) blockchain adoption
is a patient centric, value-based care model. Therefore, it is as no coincidence that
value-based care is at the center of the fastest growing (and operational) part of HIT
blockchain adoption. For this reason, telehealth can demonstrate adoption synergies
than most other lines of business in healthcare cannot.
Telehealth is used to empower consumers to make better healthcare choices, have
higher access care, and lower medical costs by getting help when they need it
instead of waiting until it’s necessary. Blockchain technology can improve existing
technological applications of telemedicine by providing more quality assurance in the
data retained each visit. Additionally, blockchain can build incentive structures based
on its ability to facilitate an economy of scale (i.e., producing more services at a
lower cost). The only thing missing from combining high data integrity with a scalable
solution for producing more services at a lower cost is a mechanism for
incentivization- enter crypto-currencies, also known as tokens.
Bitcoin and Tokens
Following the birth of Bitcoin, other alternative currencies, or tokens, arose as people
developed blockchain solutions to be less about binary transactions and more about
the quality of interaction. To accomplish this, tokens had to take on various kinds of
rights that enabled various kinds of actions, or reactions, to be made. These “rights”
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have evolved from only being able to make payments on the network (i.e., payment
rights tokens), to innovative functionalities like being rewarded for making a human
decision (i.e., contribution rights tokens). Contribution in healthcare is akin to chain of
custody of a patient’s healthcare data as multiple healthcare professionals review
diagnosis, test results, treatment and ultimately discharge plan.
As healthcare systems continue to face roadblocks in the exchange of healthcare
data, blockchain technology seemingly offers several solutions for the protection and
management of patient information. One of many blockchain startup companies,
Patientory, enables patients to secure their own data utilizing blockchain technology.
Patientory is not a standalone blockchain EMR (emergency medical record) solution,
but it does take a step in the right direction by enabling healthcare consumers to use
their personal health data as a resource to securely socialize with multiple health
teams and other patients experiencing similar health issues.
Following the footsteps of Patientory is Healthcoin, which utilizes blockchain
technology to reduce the effects of diabetes. Another offshoot, Dentacoin, utilizes
blockchain based applications to facilitate global dental care. Ultimately, programs
like Patientory and Dentacoin are still in their beginning stages and remain a work in
progress. The proverbial kinks in the chain-system require repair and whether
cryptocurrencies or smart contracts provide a cure-all solution to an evolving health
care industry remains to be seen.
Other types of tokens have enhanced their functionality by adding their own coding
to the core design. Ethereum for example, implements smart contracts. Smart
contracts are self-executing and auto-enforced digital agreements without necessity
of a middle-man. Some contractual arrangements involve financial terms and when
met, the data-oriented contract releases units or "ether." Patientory and Healthcoin
incorporate Ethereum's technology, but have developed their own token to run on
the Ethereum blockchain specifically for their respective ecosystem. For example,
when using Patientory, a doctor can use the network’s native token, PTOY, to get a
retrieve a patient’s medical history. Dentacoin's smart contract design is slightly
different; fill out a survey and in return the amount earned pays for further care at a
partnered dental clinic.
A Direct-to-Consumer Philosophy
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Blockchain technology and smart contracts in a sense remove the third-party,
empowering more of the direct to consumer philosophy, just like telehealth.
Medicine's metamorphosis through integration of modern technologies naturally
causes a paradigm shift in clinical practices, and often a divide among professional
opinion follows the change. Using cryptocurrencies in healthcare is not immune, as
believers opt to reside in either camp. Standardization of any process creates
interest groups, and as always, there are advantages and disadvantages to
adoption.
Frequent access to telehealth services allows early detection of disease and hence
lowers the medical cost for patients, doctors, and insurance companies.
Nonetheless, the efforts to reduce the administrative costs of healthcare are major
motivating factors behind the application of telemedicine. For this reason, Blockchain
may also provide a glimpse of how future virtual care communities rooted in
telemedicine can be self-sustaining by ensuring transparency in addition to
redefining trust. Point Nurse has developed a blockchain based member-owner
community that gives healthcare professionals an entrepreneurial channel to do what
they do best- help people. Their reward, “…credit toward future ownership of the
community including a share of any profits.” Essentially, healthcare professionals
such as LPNs, RNs and even med techs are empowered to build themselves as a
brand and connect with patients seeking home health services either in their
community or via telehealth.
Blockchain adoption still has a long, long way to go to achieve adoption in the
healthcare sector. Telehealth can demonstrate quite clearly how healthcare
technology can evolve faster when focused on direct to consumer value based care.
Understanding how could lead those developing major HIT blockchain use cases to
refine their focuses, even in administrative workflows.
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Brennan Bennett is the Founder and Managing Editor of Blockchain Healthcare Review, a
publication covering technical innovations in blockchain technology and how it is reshaping
the future of health data governance. He is an experienced HIT strategy consultant with a
background in the Fortune 100 space. Additionally, Brennan holds a M.S. in Biomedical
Informatics from Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey.
Department: Blockchain
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, token, telemedicine, Ethereum, Patientory, Dentacoin,
Healthcoin, EMR, security