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Blockchain DApps Interns Patients Public Health

Patientory Summer Interns 2019

National Intern Day, which is the third Thursday in July, was started in 2017 and was created to recognize interns for all of the hard work that they do. In celebration of this day, this year, we’ve had the pleasure of having seven students from Georgia State University’s Clinical Informatics Department working with us as part of the Patientory internship program.

Internship Program

Our summer internship program this year ran for 6 weeks. Seven students were chosen to join us at the Atlanta Tech Village the 4th largest startup co-worker hub in the United States. 

Partnership with Georgia State University

Our new partnership with Georgia State University Byrdine F. Lewis School of Nursing provides their students with clinical informatics experience to aid in preparing a workforce for advancing the future of healthcare delivery.

Health Informatics Graduates

Health informatics as an industry is still in its infancy. Healthcare providers were slow to adopt clinical information systems at the point of care. Only now, because federal requirements accelerated the implementation of electronic health records, is the industry starting to evolve. Now that all this health information is in electronic form, the ability to analyze this immense volume of data has created new opportunities to improve care. That’s why the federal government is predicting such huge growth in this area over the next decade. In fact, the major issue that the industry is now facing is the lack of individuals with training and experience to fill the many open positions. 

There were seven interns along with their supervisors and other leaders in attendance. They are studying the field of health informatics, the design, and implementation of IT-related in health care at Georgia State University, the public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. 

  1. Thuy DoTran
  2. Yemuda Killen
  3. Tram Bui
  4. Xueling Wang
  5. Quynh Nguyen
  6. Salman Simjee
  7. Olivia Collins

Part of the internship program consisted of the interns giving short presentations about what they learned throughout the course of their internship, and how they will use their new skills in their future careers.

One of these interns, Salman Simjee, described our company culture as, “[The] team is very open and supportive. They were always present to listen to our questions and provided us with insights about the industry.”

“The company culture is nice and respectable as well as the people who work at the Atlanta Tech Village.“ Quynh Nguyen. 

New Horizons

Interns learned more about how clinical informatics can improve the overall patient experience such as,

  1. Technology APIs electronic medical records integrations (HL7/FHIR, etc)
  2. KPIs (based on electronic data)/CHF disease states examples
  3. Nursing informatics and Smart FHIR training recommendations
  4. What is being offered by other patient centric healthcare IT as Analytics
  5. Analytic visualizations for both mobile and enterprise

And a lot more!

Final Day

Most of the interns already knew what they wanted to pursue coming into the internship. Tram Bui says she pursued Clinical Informatics at Georgia State University to become a healthcare data analyst and the patientory internship program helped her to kick start her dreams.

On the final day of the program, all our interns shared feedback about how their internship helped them figure out what career path they want to take.

We expect that number to continue to increase, by next summer, 2020.

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Interns

Welcoming Our Summer Interns for 2019!

 

Seven Georgia State University students are going to be having quite the summer experience. They have been chosen to intern with Patientory for the Summer Clinical Informatics program at Atlanta Tech Village. The program started on June 7 and run until July 29.

The students are studying the field of health informatics, the design, and implementation of IT-related in health care. It can be considered a cross between health care, information science, and computer science. Those innovations can cover security, electronic delivery, and management of records. It is a fairly new field of study – it was only in 2009 that medical records were required to be maintained in electronic form. The GSU Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions took its first health informatics students in 2013. A graduate program was launched in 2016. Both programs are unique as being the only interdisciplinary program in the United States in the field of health informatics.

With the staff of Patientory as their guides, they will be working alongside the developers of blockchain technology as applied to health care. The Patientory system will educate them about various forms of cryptocurrency, a universally centered patient database, and a way to securely share information from it. All of those combined are used for the outcome of increasing security and making health care results more accurate. The blockchain system ensures that records cannot be changed without a trail and that any access can be controlled to those with the key.

The Atlanta Tech Village is the startup gathering place for Atlanta’s many technological businesses. Members are supported in a variety of tasks in the community with the goal of connecting those with ideas, those with talent, and the capital they need. It is one of the top five tech centers in the whole United States. Marketing and business and development teams from the Tech Village will be assisting the interns in their work and analysis.

Both of those combined are going to give the interns a first-class look in how to apply everything they’ve learned in the classroom to a real-life setting. The intersection of health care and computer management that Patientory puts to use every day is a prime example of how health informatics works in the real world.

Every Friday during the internship period they will be able to attend a conference detailing some basic ways to get a job in the industry and other ways of learning and dealing with the many problems that might come up in their future careers, from dealing with diversity in the workplace to managing stress from a job. Speakers will include the co-founder of the Atlanta Tech Village itself as well as the founders of two different start-ups.

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Blockchain DApps Healthcare Providers Patients

CASE STUDY: Forging The Path To Consumer-Directed Health Through Blockchain Technology

Overview and Background

Despite incredible advancements over the last decade in converting paper healthcare records into digital data, a vast majority of consumers lack access to their electronic medical records. Sadly, many people cannot manage their healthcare records any better than they could a decade ago or even three decades ago. While it can be easy for some to point the finger at the bureaucracy and red tape of healthcare institutions, the truth is that many of these institutions would like to share data with their patients but don’t have a secure and easy way to do this. This challenging dynamic is because many medical providers use different electronic health record (EHR) systems that actually may not be able to communicate with one another easily. The resulting situation has become a significant problem where patients are caught in the middle of the healthcare industry’s lack of interoperability and without solutions that can provide patients accessible and secure healthcare data.

Patientory DApp Solution

Patientory, a digital health company based in Atlanta, Georgia, has developed a distributed application DApp solution that provides individual consumers with quick, easy, and secure access to their healthcare data. As the industry leader for DApp blockchain solutions, Patientory recently developed the first version of its beta DApp for consumers.

Patientory’s DApp leverages blockchain technology, which is an open and secure technology that captures transaction records on blocks that are connected and stores them on a distributed and encoded database that acts as a ledger. Blockchain has incredible security benefits as the records are spread across a replicated database network in which all the databases are in sync. Users, however, can only access the blocks to which they have permission to. Lastly, all the transactions that happen over blockchain are date and time stamped.

As for DApps, they 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, user-friendly, and secure sharing of healthcare data among different providers
and EHR platforms.

This new DApp solution was created from research data Patientory has collected over the past few years regarding the challenges that healthcare consumers face on a regular basis and how these challenges have evolved over time. With the DApp solution, Patientory’s goal is to create a one-stop-shop solution for healthcare consumers, where they can access their health information, engage in health-related transactions, and become empowered to improve their health by having the necessary data and tools to do so.

The DApp Beta Test

To evaluate the DApp’s product-market fit and overall effectiveness as a solution, Patientory initiated a beta test project with specific goals outlined. The goals of their research were:

  • To verify the efficacy of the distributed App
  • To seek insight into the interface’s user acceptance and general quality
  • To examine product functionality in real-world user environments and test the necessary support infrastructure
  • To collect customer suggestions and testimonials, test the profile establishment protocols and the goal-setting, activity tracking, and wallet functionalities alongside the data storage protocols for securing personal health information (PHI) within the PTOYNET™ private permissioned blockchain
  • To identify opportunities for future development regarding desirable user features and functionality

To best accomplish their goals, 80 beta users were selected to use the app for three months in all functionality areas from setting goals, tracking fitness activities, traveling internationally and utilizing the wallet feature with Dash and PTOY cryptocurrencies. The demographics and personas of the beta users were primarily affluent, health-conscious iPhone owners, with a majority owning one or more cryptocurrencies. These individuals are primarily based in the US, with a majority located in the urban settings of New York City, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, as well as non-US countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland as well as India and Asia. At the end of the three months, the beta users were then
given a detailed survey requesting their feedback on their experience with the DApp solution.

DApp Beta User Survey Results

The below results a summary of key user feedback that Patientory received:

  • The DApp is relevant and engaging.
    • 90% of respondents found the entire app useful with no elements irrelevant.
    • 80% of respondents said that they did not find any parts of the app unnecessarily complicated.
    • More than half of respondents found the app ‘very engaging.’
  • Users found DApp most useful for fitness-related activity.
    • Respondents reported that goal-setting for walking and exercise was the most useful aspect of DApp.
    • Respondents also showed interest in nutrition tracking. While 80 percent of respondents reported that they track walking or steps, 60 percent reported tracking food and hydration
  • DApp is easy and fast to install and use.
    • A full 70 percent of participants reported that they felt that the app was easy and intuitive to install, and the remaining 30 percent reported that after this initial experience with the app, they would know exactly how to install it again in the future.
    • No one reported difficulty with installation or the need to have others help them install the app. Only one respondent said that they needed someone to show them how to use certain features of the app.
    • With respect to speed, 40 percent of participants found DApp much faster than most other apps they use and participants ran into no difficulties syncing the DApp with their other apps. Participants had between 10 and 260 different apps on their phones. No participants found the app slower than other apps.
  • Beta users generally felt that DApp comprehensively covered their healthcare-related needs currently.
    • When asked about what the DApp is missing, 50 percent responded “nothing,” and when asked what features participants would add, 30 percent said “none.”

Conclusion

From Patientory’s beta testing of its new beta and the subsequent user survey, it is evident that the DApp is meeting a clear and immediate need for the consumer market. Despite only being a beta product, the vast majority of users found the DApp to not only serve as a valuable healthcare solution but also function as an excellent tool for managing fitness and diet. Along with the value of the app, most individuals found the user experience to be very engaging and relevant, which is an indicator for repeated and ongoing use. Lastly, the back-end software of the app performed quite well according to a majority of users, with the speed of the app and ease and time of install getting high marks.

While these results reflect the feedback of a current beta product for Patientory and updates and enhancements will undoubtedly be made, the data shared in this report validates the value and need for Patientory’s DApp today. Nothing illustrates this idea more than a quote from a passionate beta user “I’m all in! I want to see this become a worldwide standard. Given our mobile society, this is key to saving lives.” We couldn’t agree more.

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Blockchain Events Healthcare Providers

Patientory named as top 10 innovative technology company and won the biggest impact award

 

ATLANTA (February 12, 2019) – The Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) has announced Patientory as one of the Top 10 Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia and given biggest impact award.

Initially, TAG recognized Patientory as “Top 40” companies based on the criteria focused on innovation, including:

  1. degree of innovation
  2. scope and financial impact of innovation
  3. likelihood of success
  4. promotion of Georgia’s innovative efforts nationally and internationally

The selected “Top 40” companies were presented at The Summit – that state’s largest technology showcase – Feb. 12 at Cobb Galleria, Atlanta.

The Summit 2019 – Opening keynote was given by Kyle Tothill, The Summit Chair and Chris Lindner, Chair of the TAG Board of Directors. Also, TAG’s Larry K. Williams, President and CEO, was shared the data and insight from the NEW State of the Industry Report!

The Summit brings together and engages more than 1,200 prominent technology, business and thought leaders centered around the most prominent and relevant trends that are sparking, disrupting and driving innovation today through the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) — one of the country’s largest technology associations with 34,000+ members.

 

Among the “Top 40” selected companies, we have been selected as one of the “Top 10” innovative company for showing the highest degree of innovation, the broadest scope and financial impact of their innovations, and the greatest effect of such innovation in promoting Georgia’s technology industry throughout the U.S. and globally.

ABOUT PATIENTORY

Patientory empowers healthcare systems, providers, and consumers with a single, secure application for sharing healthcare data, providing unprecedented insight into each patient’s health and resulting in better, healthier outcomes. Patientory’s applications provide increased insight into an individual’s health management and empowers people to make better decisions, coordinate between care providers, and receive better care overall.

ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA (TAG)

TAG is the leading technology industry association in the state, serving more than 30,000 members through regional chapters in Metro Atlanta, Athens, Augusta, Columbus, Macon/Middle Georgia, and Savannah. TAG’s mission is to educate, promote, influence and unite Georgia’s technology community to foster an innovative and connected marketplace that fuels the innovation economy.

Additionally, the TAG Education Collaborative (TAG-Ed) focuses on helping science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education initiatives thrive. For more information visit the TAG website at www.tagonline.org or TAG’s community website at http://www.hubga.com. To learn about the TAG-Ed

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Blockchain Events

Patientory named a top 40 innovative technology company

Technology Association of Georgia Honors 40 Companies for Innovation and Contributions to the State’s Technology Community

ATLANTA — (January 29, 2019) — The Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), the state’s leading association dedicated to the promotion and economic advancement of Georgia’s technology industry, today announced Patientory as one of its Top 40 Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia. TAG will recognize honorees at The Summit 2019 event on February 11-12, 2019, at the Cobb Galleria Centre.

TAG’S Top 40 Awards recognize Georgia-based technology companies for their innovation, financial impact, and their efforts at spreading awareness of Georgia’s technology initiatives throughout the U.S. and globally.

“The 2019 Top 40 finalists are an elite group of innovators who represent the very best of Georgia’s Technology community,” said Larry K. Williams, President and CEO of TAG. “The 2019 Top 40 finalists are shining examples of what makes our state such a hot bed for technology, and we applaud them for standing out as leaders in Georgia’s technology community.”

This year’s Top 40 were selected from among over 90 applications submitted by companies from across Georgia. Companies selected for the “Top 40” will be showcased in an exhibition at The Summit 2019.

“This year’s Top 40 was more competitive than ever,” said Dennis Zakas, chairperson of the Top 40 Selection Committee. “In our quest to showcase the most innovative companies in Georgia, we had to select from an incredible impressive lineup of contenders. The companies that we selected this year are truly outstanding.”

The event – the state’s largest technology showcase – will feature internationally recognized keynote speakers, the honorees of the Top 40 and Top 10 Innovative Georgia Companies competition, the newest inductee into the Technology Hall of Fame of Georgia, 30 breakout sessions on global tech trends, and a two-day exhibitor showcase.

ABOUT PATIENTORY

Patientory empowers healthcare systems, providers, and consumers with a single, secure application for sharing healthcare data, providing unprecedented insight into each patient’s health and resulting in better, healthier outcomes. Patientory’s applications provide increased insight into an individual’s health management and empowers people to make better decisions, coordinate between care providers, and receive better care overall.

ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA (TAG)

TAG is the leading technology industry association in the state, serving more than 30,000 members through regional chapters in Metro Atlanta, Athens, Augusta, Columbus, Macon/Middle Georgia, and Savannah. TAG’s mission is to educate, promote, influence and unite Georgia’s technology community to foster an innovative and connected marketplace that fuels the innovation economy.

Additionally, the TAG Education Collaborative (TAG-Ed) focuses on helping science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education initiatives thrive. For more information visit the TAG website at www.tagonline.org or TAG’s community website at http://www.hubga.com. To learn about the TAG-Ed

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Blockchain Healthcare Providers Patients

Blockchain: Reimagining the Future of Health Data

It’s time for us to reimagine the future of healthcare information technology. More specifically, it’s time for us to rethink the management of personal health information, i.e. data from electronic health records (EHRs) and wearable devices. Data will continue to drive the technology that is becoming increasingly intertwined in our everyday lives and this remains especially true for healthcare.

From internet-enabled medical devices to fitness trackers, developments in digital health are creating new opportunities for comprehensive patient care and raising new questions about the ethical management of healthcare data. At Patientory, we believe the correct application of blockchain technology will allow us to effectively take advantage of these opportunities and provide answers to some of these questions.

Challenges for Comprehensive Care

Despite the advent of EHRs, medical records still suffer from a lack of interoperability. IT systems are often siloed and unique to the provider, which means a large amount of time and resources are spent simply requesting, sending, and compiling health information. This makes it challenging to create a comprehensive picture of an individual’s health across multiple providers, especially when there are variations in insurance coverage and geographic location over time.

Additionally, we are starting to see an increase in clinicians relying on patient-generated health data in conjunction with clinical data. This type of information includes health histories, symptoms, lifestyle choices, biometrics, etc., and can better inform care decisions because it provides valuable insight into an individual’s overall health and well-being in between medical visits. While patient portals and EHRs allow for a small portion of this data to be compiled, today’s technologies could be leveraged more effectively to improve health outcomes.

Challenges for Healthcare Data Management

In addition to being siloed, legacy healthcare IT systems are often aging and lacking in robust cybersecurity measures. Hospitals are particularly appealing targets for cyberattacks because their daily operations rely heavily on up-to-date information from electronic medical records,  and stolen health information is worth ten times more than a credit card number on the black market. And the more an EHR is fragmented across multiple providers, the higher the patient’s risk of personal data being exposed to people with malicious intent.

Since all of a provider’s EHRs are stored in one place, a successful breach will give a hacker access to all of that information at once. What’s especially troubling about this is that individuals have little control over the storage of their own personal health data and can do little to prevent this. There is an overall lack of patient control when it comes to the access and use of their own medical data, and this reflects broader societal questions about data management. Legislation, including HIPAA, simply has not caught up to the growing role of data in our lives.

Blockchain as a Solution

When applied to EHRs, blockchain can potentially address these issues. A blockchain consists of encrypted blocks of data that are immutable and linked together chronologically in a chain. In a healthcare setting, these blocks of data could be doctor’s appointments, surgical procedures, x-ray images, prescriptions, blood test results, patient-generated health data, etc. Copies of the blockchain would be distributed across a specified network of users and any additions to the chain would be updated for all users in real-time. Individuals would be in charge of sharing the decryption key for their own associated blocks of data with their chosen healthcare provider(s).

With a distributed application like Patientory’s, individuals would have access to a comprehensive picture of their health that includes compiled data from EHRs and wearable devices. Breaking the silos of traditional medical record storage would not only make the process of sharing EHRs significantly easier, but also result in more robust security. By integrating with PTOYNet distributed and decentralized blockchain network our application is able to adhere to both HIPAA and robust security standards.

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Blockchain

Blockchain: Unlocking Healthcare Data to Empower Patients and Improve Care

“Blockchain has the power to: a) reduce costs and increase operational efficiency, b) build trust while improving the quality of comprehensive care and c) empower individuals to take charge of their health. It’s time for us to reimagine the future of healthcare information technology.”

– From Blockchain: Unlocking Healthcare Data to Empower Patients and Improve Care

In a recent blog post for the Healthcare Information & Management Systems Society (HIMSS), Patientory CEO Chrissa McFarlane shares her vision for the application of blockchain to healthcare data. If correctly implemented, blockchain technology could help empower patients and improve care by providing these specific benefits:

  • Aggregated personal health information
  • Improved data security and integrity
  • Patient-centered control of data access and use

To learn more about how Patientory’s distributed application contributes to these goals, click here.

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Healthcare Providers Patients

The True Potential of Patient-Generated Health Data

There is no doubt that aggregated health data will continue to shape the future of healthcare. There are vast amounts of data available in today’s society, and health researchers are tapping into it to advance medical science. Large sets of data are regularly compiled and analyzed, and the findings are used to predict epidemics, cure diseases, provide better preventative care, and lower healthcare costs, among other positive things. The widespread adoption of electronic health records and the increasing prevalence of internet-enabled medical devices are creating even more opportunities for valuable data collection. While this unlocks very exciting possibilities for healthcare scientists and providers, where does the patient fit into all of this?

Patient-generated health data (PGHD) is defined by The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology as “health-related data created, recorded, or gathered by or from patients (or family members or other caregivers) to help address a health concern.” This includes health and treatment histories, symptoms, lifestyle choices, biometric data, etc. When used in conjunction with existing clinical data, PGHD can provide additional insight into an individual’s overall health and better inform decisions made by care providers. The use and sharing of PGHD can gather important information about an individual’s well-being between medical visits, allow for shared decision-making in preventive and chronic care management, and ultimately improve the cost, quality, and coordination of care.

Trust between patients and providers is a cornerstone of the medical profession and higher levels of trust result in improved health outcomes. In the Digital Health Technology Vision 2018, Accenture found that ninety-four percent of health executives believe that treating customers as partners is important or very important for gaining consumer trust. By its very nature, PGHD creates a valuable opportunity for an individual to become a true partner in their own care. Through the process of supplying data the provider would not have access to otherwise, the patient is given a voice and empowered to actively engage in their health. The power of this voice is further supported by today’s wellness apps, wearables, and fitness trackers, which are increasing consumer engagement with personal health data. However, as with any opportunity, there are potential challenges that need to be addressed.

First of all, electronic health records (EHRs) suffer from a lack of interoperability. The major benefit of PGHD is it can supplement the information found in EHRs to provide a more comprehensive picture of an individual’s health. This benefit cannot be fully realized if patient data is fragmented and siloed across multiple providers and IT systems. Another concern is data privacy and security. We are faced with the reality of hackers and data breaches almost daily, and consumers will be less willing to provide PGHD if they believe their personal information is at risk. Patientory’s distributed application uses blockchain technology to address these concerns and empowers individuals to compile and manage their own health information from multiple providers and wearable devices. They can then securely share their comprehensive health picture with the healthcare provider(s) of their choice, which allows all stakeholders to benefit from the use of PGHD. Learn more about our solution here.

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Blockchain Events

Blockchain Panels from ConV2X Now Available for Listening

Patientory attended ConVerge2Xcelerate in October, a healthcare modernization event that brought together the foremost innovators and leaders in blockchain technology, telehealth, AI, and other technologies. The intention of the conference was to address the most compelling issues, growth opportunities, and financial implications of these technologies for the healthcare industry.

Patientory CEO Chrissa McFarlane spoke on two different blockchain-focused panels at the event. The full audio for both panels is now available from Blockchain in Healthcare Today. Follow the links below to listen to the discussions.

Panel 1: Tokens & The Internet of Value: Blending Game Theory, Computer Science, Psychology, and Economics

Panel 2: Data Sharing? The Case for Blockchain at the Global Convergence of Healthcare, Life Sciences, and Consumer Markets

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Patients

Returning the Control of Health Data to the Consumer

The vast amount of data available in today’s technology-driven and hyper-connected society is astounding. We create data everywhere we go with our smartphones, tablets, and laptops, and the increasing prevalence of the Internet of Things means that even more of the devices we interact with on a daily basis are gathering and sharing information. The application of this information through the creation and interpretation of large data sets, i.e. big data, is becoming an increasingly valuable economic force. Organizations in both the public and the private sectors are leveraging big data across industries, including healthcare, to develop more effective practices, inspire innovative breakthroughs, and better serve consumer needs.

The growing role of data in our lives and the data trading markets that have arisen raise important questions about data access and ownership. Who rightfully owns data, the individual creating it or the organization collecting it? Who has the right to access all of this information and what are they allowed to do with it? Who ultimately has more control when it comes to data use, the individual or the organization? Unfortunately, there is not a clear answer to these questions because in many cases our laws simply have not caught up yet. When it comes to electronic health records in the United States, providers are technically the owners (in every state except New Hampshire) since the data is recorded and stored on their IT systems.

One example of new data-related legislation, which came into effect just this year, is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enacted by the European Union. The goal of the law is to ensure better data protection and privacy for all individuals by enhancing their rights when it comes to the handling of their personal information. The new rules require organizations to ensure that consumers explicitly consent to data collection and clearly understand the type of information being collected. Individuals in the EU now have the right to access their personal data, to request corrections to inaccurate data, and to restrict the use of their data. Although the full impact of the GDPR remains to be seen, it is a step in the right direction towards consumer empowerment when it comes to data.

There is no doubt that big data will continue to shape the future of healthcare. It is being used to predict epidemics, cure diseases, provide better preventative care, and lower costs, among other positive things. However, individuals have a surprising lack of control when it comes to their own health information. They are often asked to sign away health data ownership via blanket consent forms at times when they are scared or vulnerable, such as before surgery. Consumer rights need to be evolving alongside the use of data in healthcare. Patientory believes individuals should be able to easily access their own comprehensive health data and manage the use of it on their own terms. This is why we developed our distributed application. You can learn more about our solution to healthcare data access and control here.