Category: Patients

Categories
Patients

Did You Know Your Medical Data Fuels a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry?

In 2017, the legal buying, selling, and trading of our personal medical data comprised a $14 billion dollar industry; that number is expected to grow over $68 billion by 2025. Adam Tanner is the author of Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records. In an article for Time magazine, Tanner writes: “The growth of the big health data bazaar comes at a time that very few patients have access to their own comprehensive records for their own care, despite billions of dollars of U.S. government spending to encourage the adoption of electronic medical records.” You can find the full article here.  

Patients have a distinct lack of ownership when it comes to their own medical data. They are often asked to sign blanket consent forms that allow the practice of data trading when they are sick and potentially vulnerable. The buying and selling of medical data without explicit permission from the patient is technically allowed under HIPAA because the data is stripped of personally identifying characteristics, including names, Social Security numbers, and addresses. However, with today’s data mining technology and the vast amount of data available, the re-identification of anonymized data is only getting easier. Patientory believes it is time for patients to be put back in control of their own health information.

Categories
Blockchain Patients

Data Brokers Have Access to Your Health Information, Do You?

In today’s technology-driven world, data is an inevitable part of our lives. From fitness wearables to wireless medical devices to electronic medical records, the digitization of health information will continue to be a common practice. There is another common practice in the healthcare industry that most people do not like to talk about: medical data trading. A multi-billion-dollar market exists for information found in medical records, including prescription records, hospital visits, blood tests, insurance records, and doctor notes. Commercial companies are able to buy and sell this data without violating HIPAA because the information is not directly tied to an individual’s identity. However, the records bought and sold are often still associated with an age, gender, partial zip code, and a doctor’s name.

In the past, the stripping of a name, address, and social security number from a medical record would have been sufficient to protect anonymity. In today’s world, this is not the case as the re-identification of seemingly anonymized data is only getting easier. A straightforward data mining tool can easily cross-reference multiple databases to aggregate data and re-identify individuals from their theoretically private medical information. As an example, Harvard University Professor and computer scientist Latanya Sweeney was able to link zip codes, birth dates, and gender from a voter registration list to publicly available medical data, including hospital discharge records and health care cost data on hospital visits. And this was research conducted almost twenty years ago! The capabilities of data mining technology have only improved alongside the vast amount of data available today.

While consumers have the ability to increase the privacy of their non-medical data and control access to it, there is a frustrating lack of control when it comes to medical data. Even with the advent of electronic medical records, patients still do not have access to comprehensive health data across providers due to a lack of interoperability. Additionally, there is no way for patients to opt out of third parties using their anonymized health data for commercial purposes or otherwise. Theoretically, patients could choose healthcare providers based on whether or not their health information systems sell anonymized data, but in reality, this choice is limited by health insurance companies and specific health plans. If the patient is truly at the center of healthcare, then the management of health information needs to reflect that.

Patientory wants to change this narrative by applying blockchain technology to electronic health information. In addition to blockchain’s robust cybersecurity abilities, it can democratize data access in favor of the consumer. Instead of storing and distributing data through a single database, multiple copies of the same data are shared on a ledger distributed across a peer-to-peer network of users. When one copy of the ledger is changed, all of the other copies are updated in real-time and the validity is guaranteed by the network. By using a distributed application like Patientory’s to access electronic health records, patients will have the power to decide exactly who can access their medical data and for what purpose. The corporate rights of data brokers should no longer be privileged over the rights of consumers to control their own health data.

Categories
Blockchain Healthcare Providers Patients Public Health

Restoring Trust in Public Health with Blockchain Technology

Trust is essential to building and maintaining strong, healthy relationships, and the relationship between a patient and their healthcare provider is no exception. Patients with trust in their doctors are more likely to follow treatment plans and medical advice on lifestyle and family planning issues, reducing their lifetime cost of care and increasing their quality of life. A 1999 study found that sixty-two percent of patients with high levels of trust always take their prescribed medication and follow their doctor’s recommendations, but only fourteen percent of patients with low levels of trust do. As another example, for patients with H.I.V., trust in medical providers is associated with more clinic visits, fewer emergency room visits, increased use of antiretroviral drugs, and improved reported physical and mental health.

Mistrust, unfortunately, has been an increasing trend in healthcare. In 1966, almost three-fourths of Americans said they had great confidence in the leaders of the medical profession; by 2012 only one-third expressed this view. Combined with the overall decline in Americans’ trust in institutions the last few decades, the potential threats to public health become apparent. A lack of trust can lead to individual patients refusing vaccinations or forgoing the flu shot, which can have potentially deadly consequences for the greater population. During the 2014 Ebola outbreak, only thirty-one percent of the American public said they trusted public health officials to share complete and accurate information about the Ebola virus and a mere fourteen percent said they trusted the government to do the right thing. If these patterns of mistrust continue, future responses to public health emergencies could be drastically impaired.

So what can be done to rebuild trust in our healthcare systems? A recent report by Accenture reveals two clear steps that healthcare institutions can take: over ninety percent of health executives believe that treating customers as partners and ensuring the security of consumer data are both important or very important for gaining consumer trust. Consumer-centricity and data security are also two of the key benefits of blockchain technology, particularly when applied to electronic health records (EHRs). Traditional EHRs suffer from a lack of interoperability and cybersecurity due to varying practice standards and legacy IT systems. This makes sharing comprehensive health data securely across healthcare providers and institutions especially challenging and leaves consumers with little control over their own data.

Patientory is currently using the PTOYNet blockchain administered by the Patientory Association to shift this paradigm and empower patients to take control of their medical records. Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, democratizes trust by removing the ‘middleman’ in transactions and allowing information to be recorded and shared by a community. Rather than relying on a central trust authority, blockchain relies on cryptography and a peer network for verification. All of the participants have a copy of the ledger updated in real time, providing a comprehensive, immutable record of information. Patientory’s blockchain-based distributed application allows patients to decide exactly who can access their health data and for what purpose. We believe improving consumer access to health data information is the first step to increasing trust in healthcare institutions.

Categories
Blockchain Healthcare Providers Patients

The Accenture Digital Health Technology Vision 2018: Trust and Responsibility

As technology becomes more deeply embedded in our lives, healthcare organizations are increasingly applying new technologies and innovations to deliver personalized, efficient, and informed care. The Accenture Digital Health Technology Vision 2018 emphasizes the need for healthcare providers to prioritize trust and responsibility in order for people to receive the full benefits of digitally enabled healthcare services.

The report explores five specific trends: Extended Reality, Frictionless Business, Internet of Thinking, Citizen AI, and Data Veracity. The first three are considered the enablers of an intelligent healthcare enterprise while the latter two are considered the consequences. Blockchain is primarily considered a part of the Frictionless Business trend. Ninety-one percent of health executives believe blockchain and smart contracts will be critical for their organization over the next three years. Read more about Patientory’s application of blockchain to healthcare here.

Categories
DApps Patients

How New Blockchain Offerings Can Improve Consumers’ Healthcare Experience

The complex nature of several aspects of the healthcare system sometimes seem to suggest that the system is not, in fact, built for the stakeholder it is meant to serve – the patient or healthcare consumer. Consumers struggle to get adequate time with the right healthcare providers, to obtain accurate and up-to-date health information, to navigate the wieldy health insurance industry, and to pay for expensive medical interventions that may or may not be necessary. Perhaps most frustrating to consumers, is the hassle of accessing or sharing their own personal health information.

A Complex Health System Reflects Complex Healthcare Demands

Of course the system has not been built with the goal of being complex or esoteric. The intention behind difficult-to-access health data is not to keep patients or their families in the dark about pertinent health information. Instead, access has become difficult in response to growing needs and demands for data privacy and security. Just as consumers want to be able to access their own health records at will, they also want their records kept private and secure from manipulation or modification.

While the shift to electronic health records (EHRs), which has been broadly adopted by healthcare providers, has improved the ability of consumers to readily access their records, these EHR systems do not adequately address privacy and security issues, nor are they as efficient as they theoretically might have been. Indeed, EHRs tend to suffer from interoperability problems, which prevent different types of EHR systems from interacting seamlessly with others. Thus, if a consumer sees healthcare providers that use distinct EHR systems, those providers may not be able to share the consumer’s health-related information in an efficient or precise manner.

Blockchain Can Enhance Access in a Secure Way While Providing Additional Consumer Benefits

The Patientory App for consumers makes it easier for patients to access, store, and manage their health information in a simple and secure way while also providing other solutions to consumer-facing challenges in healthcare. An important distinction of the Patientory App is it is a distributed App, or DApp, rather than a traditional App. DApps leverage blockchain technology, and specifically, have a distributed nature. In other words, DApps are applications that interface with blockchains, which are not stored or controlled by a single entity or in a single location. This means that a particular EHR or healthcare provider does not solely control an individual’s healthcare data, thus allowing for more efficient, seamless, and secure sharing of healthcare data among different providers and EHR platforms.

Using the Patientory App, consumers are not only able to access their health information themselves able to grant selected access permissions to others, but they can also use the App to better manage their health continuously and in real-time. For instance, they can set health-related goals, track behavior and progress, and access educational or support tools, resources, and communities. In addition, consumers can use the Patientory App to navigate payment options and execute individual payments. Given the breadth of solutions that the Patientory App provides – and its potential to cumulatively collect consumers’ information over the lifespan – the App is poised to become a one-stop-shop for healthcare consumers looking to take control of both their health and health-related factors like health finances. The greater transparency afforded by the App can even drive down healthcare costs by enhancing preventative care and reducing crisis management and hospital readmissions.

The Patientory App also utilizes  the Patientory utility currency, PTOY , where PTOY coins can be used for transactions and storage within the private, permissioned blockchain. As Patientory also has a dashboard offering for other healthcare stakeholders, including healthcare providers and payers, the company is building a fail-safe blockchain infrastructure with solid interoperability capabilities. The company is therefore taking a 360-degree approach to its blockchain solution for healthcare so that the information and value that each stakeholder brings can be efficiently transferred to other stakeholders, and individuals from all corners of the healthcare system can benefit.

Categories
Healthcare Providers Patients

Patientory CEO Speaks on How New Blockchain Solutions Can Solve Old Healthcare Problems

Last Thursday, September 13th, Bloomberg hosted a live event on ‘The Value of Data: How Emerging Technologies are Redefining Our Future.’ Patientory CEO and Founder Chrissa McFarlane was invited to speak on a panel discussing how blockchain can be utilized to solve global social challenges such as plastic pollution, foodborne illnesses, and consumer access to healthcare. This panel also featured representatives from IBM, Walmart, and the United Nations.

When people hear the word ‘blockchain’, they often think of cryptocurrency, a digital form of currency that has gained notoriety due to the growth of companies such as Bitcoin. This association of blockchain with cryptocurrency usually results in consumer skepticism and concern, as cryptocurrency is currently a very nascent and unregulated currency basis. Blockchain, however, has far greater applications than just cryptocurrency, specifically regarding security and transparency of data transactions and exchanges. To better understand these applications, it’s important to define what exactly blockchain is.

According to Forbes magazine, ‘Blockchain is a public register in which transactions between two users belonging to the same network are stored in a secure, verifiable and permanent way. The data relating to the exchanges are saved inside cryptographic blocks, connected in a hierarchical manner to each other. This creates an endless chain of data blocks — hence the name blockchain — that allows you to trace and verify all the transactions you have ever made. The primary function of a blockchain is, therefore, to certify transactions between people.”

From this definition, one can see how blockchain is a technology that allows users to securely and visibly complete transactions or data exchanges. One such use case can be found in the global food supply chain. Following a number of scandals in food production, most infamously the European horse meat scandal in 2013, where foods advertised as containing beef were found to contain undeclared or improperly declared horse meat, trust in global conglomerates’ ability to track the source of all its food products was at an all-time low. This mistrust led IBM to partner with Walmart, Unilever, Nestle and six other large companies in 2016 to release the Food Trust blockchain to track food through supply chains around the world. This created an immutable record of the food production cycle of every single item of produce on a blockchain. Consumers, as a result, could trust that they are buying and eating the produce they believe they are.

As seen in the food safety example, the implications of blockchain are powerful and can be just as powerful in healthcare as in food safety. Currently, consumer access to their healthcare data is a real challenge and a long-standing one at that. While gone are the days of paper charts, as much of healthcare data today is digitized and electronic, many healthcare providers do not have a way to share and grant access to such data for consumers securely. That’s where blockchain comes in.

In the healthcare industry, blockchain technology can help healthcare providers securely allow consumers to access and view their data, empowering consumers to have far greater ownership and management of their health. Additionally, blockchain enables healthcare providers to be compliant in meeting the GDPR and HIPAA regulations, two significant hurdles that have prevented consumers from successfully accessing their healthcare data.

Blockchain technology is not just about cryptocurrency or Bitcoin or fledging digital currency markets. It’s a solution that can indeed change the landscape of healthcare, not to mention many other global social problems. This technology has arrived – now is the time for healthcare providers and institutions to be open to adopting it, as the health of their patient communities depends on it.

Categories
Healthcare Providers Patients

Addressing Healthcare Consumer Access and Data Ownership with Blockchain

 

The Challenge with Healthcare Data Ownership

The digital era has shepherded in new challenges and opportunities in healthcare. The shift from handwritten medical notes to electronic health records has raised important questions about access, shareability, and ownership of health-related information. Today, the vast majority of healthcare providers use electronic health records that afford consumers the ability to view and download health data created at those institutions.

Given that medical records rely on and are personal to individual consumers, it is intuitive to assume that those consumers own their medical data. However, due in part to intellectual property laws and the fact that medical records tend to include professional medical opinions, data ownership tends to legally reside with the creator or author of the record itself. The specific data ownership laws differ from state to state, but federal law provides consumers with rights related to the security and privacy of their health data.

Progress and Grey Areas in Democratizing Data

The progress made thus far in helping consumers access their health data will likely prove invaluable in helping to engage consumers in their healthcare and thereby empowering them to lead healthier lives. Consumers do indeed have the right not only to view their records but also to obtain those records in the format of their choosing. Providing consumers access to this health data also empower healthcare providers to get a more holistic view of consumer health-data, which can improve clinical decision-making. From a health perspective, consumer access to data appears to be headed in the right direction.

While consumer health is the priority in healthcare, another issue related to consumer data that has not yet been adequately solved is the use of consumer data as digital assets. If healthcare providers who own consumer data de-identify that data or remove the personal information attached to that data, then the data is no longer protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). What that means is that the owners of this valuable data can sell it without compensating the consumers, without whom, the data would not exist.

Ideally, consumers could not only access and review their medical records but also share it with healthcare providers and other third parties, and sell it to, for example, pharmaceutical companies or clinical research organizations. These goals are central to the White House’s Precision Medicine Initiative, which aims to make health data portable and conveniently shareable. However, even as consensus grows around the goals for consumer health data, there is one major challenge associated with this democratization of data ownership. That is, effectively decentralizing health data requires security measures that ensure that the added layer of transparency is not accompanied by an ability for people to alter the data.

Patientory Leverages Blockchain as a Solution

Patientory’s blockchain approach provides a solution to this healthcare data security challenge while also driving down costs through lower transaction fees and overhead. Like blockchain strategies that have been heavily and successfully adopted in the finance industry, Patientory’s blockchain will provide a decentralized database where information can be rapidly updated and accessible to a multitude of users. Patientory’s semantic technology will help healthcare providers and consumers alike as they work together to understand and improve health from cradle to grave.

Categories
Healthcare Providers Patients

A Bird’s Eye View on the Patientory, Inc. Software

Patientory, Inc.

[ATLANTA – April 3, 2018 ]

Patientory, Inc. is currently solving the elephant in the room that has been plagued by the healthcare industry for years;  access and mobility of healthcare data. By combining the best of both worlds (blockchain and health data management), we’re able to provide software that will improve the efficiency and efficacy of the healthcare system. Whether that’s collecting and analyzing data from a heart monitor to sharing fluoroscopy diagnostic results from multiple specialists, Patientory, Inc. which develops the distributed application software allowing users to access their health data integrates with the PTOY blockchain administered and managed by the Patientory Stiftung on the backend.

To achieve this, the PTOY blockchain is governed as a private permissioned blockchain via a consortium membership of data storage nodes. Permissioned blockchains not only come with all the benefits of blockchain but also guarantees authority over parties authorized to join, view and make use of the network. The information transfer happens within the PTOY permissioned blockchain network hence it makes the data exchanges faster and readily accessible.

So, is blockchain the one pill for healthcare’s woes? Maybe not. However, the use of the blockchain infrastructure to integrate into the workflows of the health system and provide secure data through a network ecosystem can prove to save the industry costs with improved health outcomes. In 2017, the cost of diabetes rose to $327B. 73% of this cost is attributed to direct health care expenditures and inefficiencies.

As the PTOY blockchain is a fork of the Ethereum based blockchain, there still remains a few bottlenecks, like slow transaction times, scalability issues, data storage, consensus optimization.etc. However, besides the above mentioned cons, the improvements are happening at an astonishing pace with solutions that are easily adaptable to business and enterprise environments. We hope to establish and foster a developer community that is very supportive and active in addressing the issues to make the platform more robust once the PTOY blockchain codebase is released by the Patientory Stiftung.

1American Diabetes Association. Diabetes Care. 2018;doi:10.2337/dci18-0007

Bright future

Patientory, Inc. is connecting the best of both worlds – blockchain and health data management.  The Patientory, Inc wallet software that incorporates the PTOY blockchain network ensures the access to electronic health and medical data information to regulate and make use of the data available to build consumer centric and feature-rich applications for patients, hospitals, and insurance companies. Our mobile wallet, app and web portal access serves to unlock the limitless potential of healthcare data usage for the future.

 

Categories
Healthcare Providers Patients

Patientory Exhibits at HIMSS18

Demos platform that connects physicians, care providers and patients in one place using encryption-based blockchain technology

[ATLANTA – February 24, 2018 ]

IMSS18, Booth #9900-55, #11955 – Blockchain healthcare company, Patientory, is exhibiting at HIMSS18 and is offering demos of its platform that centralizes medical records for doctors, care providers, and consumers. Patientory is one of two blockchain companies participating in the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase™ – a premier 30,000-square-foot exhibition that demonstrates the interoperability imperative for connecting health and care, March 5-9 in Las Vegas.

Currently, patients do not have an efficient way of accessing all of their health information, but Patientory is changing this by revolutionizing the way doctors and patients interact and gain access to medical records, cutting out all the layers and processes that currently act as stumbling blocks in healthcare coordination. Using blockchain technology, Patientory stores medical information on a secure, blockchain platform that allows doctors, care providers, and consumers to be a unified care team and empowers consumers to take control of their health. Patientory’s employment of blockchain technology helps the healthcare ecosystem mitigate damaging data breaches so you don’t have to worry about patient confidentiality.

“We are thrilled to participate in HIMSS, to demo Patientory Core: Part 1 and continue our global mission to transform healthcare and provide a solution that supports better healthcare outcomes through improved data access and management,” Said Patientory CEO and Founder Chrissa McFarlane. “We invite you to visit our booth and see live demos of the mobile app and how the medical information will be presented to healthcare providers and consumers.”

The HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition brings together 45,000+ health IT professionals, clinicians, executives and vendors from around the world. Exceptional education, excellent speakers, cutting-edge health IT products and powerful networking are hallmarks of this industry-leading conference.

To learn more about Patientory, please visit www.patientory.com. For additional information about HIMSS or the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase™, please visit www.himssconference.org or HIMSS Interoperability Showcase.

———
For more information, please contact:
678.951.9007
info@patientory.com

About Patientory

Patientory is empowering people to take charge of their health. Patientory connects doctors, care providers, and consumers all within a single, secure platform – creating a care team that works together to provide the best care. We’re revolutionizing the way doctors, and patients interact and gain access to information, cutting out all layers and processes that currently are stumbling blocks in care coordination.

About HIMSS

HIMSS is a global voice, advisor and thought leader of health transformation through health information and technology with a unique breadth and depth of expertise and capabilities to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of health, healthcare and care outcomes. HIMSS designs and leverages key data assets, predictive models and tools to advise global leaders, stakeholders and influencers of best practices in health IT so they have the right information at the point of decision.

HIMSS drives innovative, forward thinking around best uses of technology in support of better connected care, improved population health and low cost of care. HIMSS is a not-for-profit, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with additional offices in North America, Europe, the United Kingdom and Asia.

Categories
Healthcare Providers Patients

Immunization Integration and Interoperability: What Are the Benefits?

By Patientory, an exhibitor at the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase™ at the 2018 HIMSS Global Conference & Exhibition, and Quiana Lloyd, Director of Marketing and Communications

[ATLANTA – February 20, 2018 ] The enormous importance of health IT in the healthcare industry can be underplayed. Daily patient care and interaction would be tedious for healthcare professionals if not for innovations of health IT aimed at ensuring the security of electronic health records (EHR).

It’s no news that patients are becoming increasingly aware and interested in owning their personal health information. With interoperability in place, various healthcare providers have access to a patient’s health information, helping to ensure speed and comprehensiveness of treatment.

Doctors can access a patient’s current medical condition by opening the patient’s EHR to view medical history, treatments, allergies, and prescriptions. This translates into an effective treatment for their patients by reducing potential conflict in prescribed medication, for example. Repetition of risky tests and procedures are significantly reduced with the availability of the test results to various healthcare providers.

Amber’s Story

One patient named Amber will never forget her Hepatitis A and B combination vaccination. It happened just in time to save her from contracting the deadly virus sweeping through San Diego County.

Amber always thought she had gotten all her vaccinations when she was younger and naturally assumed that she had gotten one for the Hepatitis A virus. She had just come in for a regular checkup and was going through routine questions with her resident doctor when she mentioned traveling for a short visit to see her mother based in San Diego.

It then occurred to the doctor – based on the aforementioned virus outbreak in San Diego – to take a look at her medical history. It would have been time-consuming to call up other professionals from various facilities to fax over Amber’s medical records. But thanks to a secure patient platform, Amber could grant her doctor access in minutes to her health information.

Patient platforms empower people to take charge of their health. Patient platforms are revolutionizing the way doctors and patients interact and gain access to information, cutting out all layers and processes that currently are stumbling blocks in care coordination. Patient platforms connect doctors, care providers, and consumers, creating a care team that works together to provide the best care. #healthcare#blockchain#tech#startup#EmpowerHIT

Experience these up-and-coming digital innovations at the HIMSS Interoperability Show-case™.