About MediChain
MediChain gives patients ownership of their own medical data.
MediChain is a medical big-data platform. It allows patients to store their own data in a secure way and give access to specialists anywhere regardless of the payer network or EMR (Electronic Medical Record) used.
Whenever any data is gathered about a patient, by device or medical professional, dispensing a prescription or even purchase of a non-prescription medication, the patient (through an app) or the device would get a chance to have a reference or “pointer” added to an Ethereum blockchain—a decentralized digital ledger. So the blockchain is an index to storage and it contains the hashes that validate the offchain data.
Instead of payments, this blockchain ecosystem would record critical medical information off-chain, indexed by a virtually incorruptible cryptographic database, maintained by a network of computers, that is accessible to anyone running the software and has the patient's permission to access the specific cryptographic keys.
Every point at which a doctor logs on the blockchain (or the patient logs on for themselves with their smartcard, giving them control of their own data) would become part of a patient’s off-chain record, no matter which electronic system the doctor was using—so any caregiver could use it without worrying about incompatibility issues.
In this way, blockchain technology can give patients more control over their information and streamline the exchange of medical records in a secure way, protect sensitive data from hackers, and make sure that patients benefit from sharing information. A custom-built “healthcare blockchain” will herald an industry-wide revolution in medical records at a far deeper level than has been postulated previously.
Specific rules can be flexibly added to the protocol enabling it to radically improve health care, while adding value along the whole chain. The rule network is flexible and extendible and will facilitate the exchange of complex health information between patients and providers, between providers, and between providers and payers, remaining secure from malicious attacks and giving previously undreamed of control over privacy.
MediChain will provide innovation in electronic medical records (EMRs) by providing a free-to-integrate open source API to add MediChain to any EMR without regulatory barriers. MediChain is a solution tuned to the needs of patients, the treatment community, and medical researchers. It adds a novel, decentralized record management system for EMRs that uses blockchain technology to manage authentication, confidentiality, accountability, and data sharing while storing data off-chain in a secure cloud. The modular design integrates with providers' existing, local data-storage solutions, facilitating interoperability and making our system convenient and adaptable.
Global, blockchain-based patient identifiers, which can be held in patient held smartcards can amalgamate hospital records as well as data from other sources like employee wellness programs and wearable health monitors, and seamlessly weld together the components of current digital systems treating them as additional off-chain data stores.
Global Market Size
The average cost of developing a new drug is $2.6 billion US taken over 106 samples and 10 companies. The annual development budget in the US is $153 billion dollars per year. Founder Mark Baker has first hand experience in this sector doing big data analysis for a crucial part of the development of a highly successful drug as well as big data experience as CTO in a major predictive analytics player.
Ultimately, the potential medical big data market is a substantial portion of the future drug development market.
In addition, and acting as an enabler, Transparency Market Research’s study of the Electronic Health Records (EHR) Marketvalues the global EHR market at $15.56 billion USD (Growing to $23.98 billion USD).
Although we could try to monetize that, it makes more sense to aim to bring substantial extra value to that market by creating an acceptable system to monetize data in the EHRs while benefiting patients and doctors.
This represents just part of the value of the MediChain data set as it excludes fine grained big data (e.g. out of wearables, diagnostic devices and hospital and specialist databases) and excludes additional value created by the value of data to insurers and pharmaceutical companies, which can be conservatively estimated as 20% of the current annual spend on Pharmaceutical research of 157 billion U.S. dollars .
What is the plan?
Working from our existing demonstrator, MediChain system will be developed on an Ethereum framework with offchain data stored in secure clouds in appropriate regions. It will initially be launched in collaboration with a number of medical specialities such as epilepsy and rheumatology and specific diagnostic devices. The next phase will be building up the chain data warehouse through an open access API and medical partnerships. MediChain will then be made publically available through the API and through partners for data acquisition. Then an exchange will been developed to allow secure controlled anonymized data access to patient data.
Philosophy
The underlying philosophy of MediChain is that all personal data has value which should belong, in the first instance, explicitly to the customer. The customer can decide if they want to sell it in an anonymized form, for example to to insurers or pharma companies, but that's for them to decide. According to Seidenberg in Wired, 85 percent of smartphone buyers expect to access personal health data on their devices. Optimizing the MediChain blockchain to be usefully accessible in that way is a key to success.
Utility Tokens
What are the Tokens?
MediChain Utility Tokens (MCU) represent the value of arbitrary patient data blocks. MCU Utility tokens can be purchased via the platform during the tokens sale. A rule of thumb is that initially, the data from each consultation or piece of data is arbitrarily given a value in MCUs equal to buyer cost of the consultation in US dollars. Over time this value is adjusted for token availability, different data types, diseases, patient demographics etc., to reflect the buyer’s market. Data is available (subject to rules and anonymization) through one or more marketplaces to buyers.
Token Utility
Utility Tokens (MCUs) can be used for:
Research Program Voting
MediChain funds and tokens support the creation of research grants particularly aimed at academic institutions, healthcare networks, universities and scientists to gather high-value big data to MediChain (and the research community). MediChain Utility Tokens are used to vote on determining the focus of future research. Voting options are determined by internal and external domain experts.
And to buy:
Personal Medical Data Storage and transfer
All patients regardless of whether they are utility token holders will get to store pointers to their data without charge on the chain ecosystem. Utility token holders with more than 100 tokens will be given smart card access to their own data once it is implemented, probably in year two.
Personal Medical Data Services
Individuals holding utility tokens will be able to use their tokens to purchase any appropriate digitally transmitted medical services, such as diagnostic services from institutions participating in the system.
MCU Discounts
MCU Tokens will be usable for discounts for a range of digital services as well as purchase of compatible devices which may include Fitbit products like the Fitbit Alta HR, AliveCor Cardiac Monitors like the Kardia, Apple Watches like the The Apple Watch Series 3 and related healthkit products from partners. MCU Token discounts will also be used for discounts on medical services which may include consultations and prescriptions in applicable domains.
Institutional Medical Data Services (including Diagnosis)
Institutions holding utility tokens will be able to use their tokens to pay for or purchase any appropriate digitally transmitted medical services, such as diagnostic services.
Research Medical Data Services
Researchers will be able to access data depending on the rules set by the patients uploading the data. From the researcher’s point of view it becomes primarily big data. An academic researcher may be able to access the data set either freely or for a nominal fee paid by the research grant (like 12 months access for $10K worth of tokens). Their findings when published will stimulate further interest in MediChain as a research resource. A researcher or research group in a pharmaceutical company may be able to do a shallow sweep through the data to look for epidemiological trends and correlations for maybe $100K or subscribe to do that. After that they would typically pay much more (up to many millions of US dollars) for a full, in-depth data set suitable as part of a new drug discovery or validation.
Example of how data may be sold for tokens
A client company, typically a pharmaceutical company, wants to purchase data. Although there may be an account manager working with them, this is not essential and they can create an order through an API, providing a request on required set of metrics (patients disease, age range, sex etc), the available amount of medical records in the ecosystem can be received by API request, thus the price of data can be known in advance.
When the payment for the data purchase service is done, MediChain company converts received fiat funds into tokens and transfers them to a smart contract.
The smart contract receives tokens with an attached message on an order requirements set of metrics, connects to a private API, receives addresses and hashes of patients whose data should be added to
an order delivery result, integrates data collection to a single package (which will be delivered to a purchaser), after that order delivery is made to a purchaser.
The patients’ accounts whose data was purchased in total receive some portion of tokens These tokens are distributed proportionally between: patients and clinics or other providers who added this data to the system database, the proportion of tokens distribution should be designed as well with MediChain help. MediChain company receives the rest of the tokens, which are sent by smart contract to a service provider address..
When this data is sold, the patient gets a proportion of the revenue (again according to rules) through the MCU ledgers. Broken pointers will be cleaned from the system automatically following specific programmable rules.
In addition when a patient loads data pointers to MediChain they can tender clinicians, providers and algorithms to perform analyses and diagnoses on this data. This can be done anonymously. The results of these are uploaded to the blockchain (with suitable anonymizers). These can be accessed by patients paying using MCUs, which can be bought with fiat currency or BitCoins, paying a proportion to the clinician, provider or algorithm developer.
The figure following shows, in simplified form how tokens and data flow around the MediChain ecosystem.
More Information About Detail of Project read our Whitepaper
Take Your Data Anywhere You Go
Move it between healthcare providers, specialists, insurers or even countries
Keep Data Safe and Anonymised
Patients decide how anonymised they want their medical data to be
No Cost for Patients or Doctors
Monetised by patients opting to let medical scientists and companies use data for research.
2,000,000,000
potential users
$150Bn+ pa
worth of problems solved
14,400x
faster transaction speed
Our Solutions
The Problems
First, US big pharm spends $157 billion a year on research.
Second, Medical Errors are now the 3rd largest cause of death in the US costing $1 trillion in the US alone.
The Data Solution
Population-based de-identified patient data has already produced advances against WHO’s (World Health Organisation) top ten diseases including diabetes and heart failure.
Population data lets researchers tackle the big issues in medicine.
What MediChain Offers
Using Blockchain Technology,MediChain will promote these research breakthroughs.
Sharing Medical Data
By patients opting in and sharing their medical data, they will be able to help people who are suffering from similar health issues.
Additionally, sharing medical data will streamline the process of finding cures to the world’s worst diseases.
“MediChain is revolutionising medical records and healthcare with Blockchain”
Dr. Mark Baker, CEO and Founder
Token Holder Benefits
MediChain Utility Tokens (MCU) represent the value of arbitrary patient data blocks.
Token holders benefit in a number of ways :
- Institutional Medical Data Services (including Diagnosis)
- Medical Research Data Services
- Any/All additional future business transactions on the MediChain Platform
- Research Program Voting. Get the chance to determine the focus of future research
- Personal Medical Data Storage and transfer
- Personal Medical Data Services
- MCU Discounts
ETH : 0x8630585BF2C519b74551c1eCBE50f20698Ab2049
