Hi, my name is Steve Wishstar. I'm the CTO at MedChain.
The use case that I'm going to talk to you today is kind of... can be regarded as the poster child of how to use blockchain technology.
You know, along with identity, voting rights, supply chain management, healthcare.
The healthcare field is kind of regarded as a prime example of why someone would not want to want their medical records changed or tampered with.
And MedChain is actually tackling that use case.
So, our mission is actually to use blockchain technology to establish a better, more secure, and transparent framework
for storing electronic medical records that vastly improves the quality for the patients, while reducing healthcare costs.
So MedChain gives patients control of their own health information and the ability to delegate that access to providers like doctors and hospitals using the blockchain and a distributed storage system.
The MedChain network itself is an extensible, layered architecture and protocol system that is governed and secured by multiple blockchaines and utilizes a multi-crypto-token currency framework.
And this network is built upon Hyperledger Fabric and permissioned blockchain.
The MedChain solution itself is... We kind of refer to as a common data-layer that allows existing EMR, electronic medical record companies,
to extend their software that already exists within a globally compliant framework that facilitates secure storage privacy and transparency.
Our first objective is to basically reorient the current architecture, so patients have control over their medical records.
I mean currently, as a patient today, you can tell your doctors what to do with your medical records, but you actually can't do it yourself.
You can't go out there and do it yourself. It's inconvenient.
And so basically, we typically have to call up the doctor, pay like a reasonable fee to have them make copies of your medical records and then fax them over to your other doctor for a second opinion.
So... And then plus, it's on their timeline. It's not on yours. You can't dictate when that gets done, so it's pretty inconvenient.
So, why would we want to streamline this process?
Healthcare itself is becoming more individualistic and holistic.
So, people are choosing what doctors they want to see as a result of being told what doctors that they have to see within their network.
But we want to transfer our test results over to those new doctors, so we can get that second opinion.
And it's not just one doctor anymore.
We need the ability to incorporate all different modalities of our healthcare together, whether that's like a report from the emergency room,
your yearly doctor's visits, and your blood work, to your chiropractor, or even your dentist.
There's no need to basically repeat all these procedures or to leave the next provider guessing as to what was done or why it was [done], why you're on those medications in the first place.
Similarly, the population is becoming even more mobile.
So we have like second homes in different states, our companies are relocating all the time, big adventurers seeking opportunities where we go out for a long time.
Ultimately, our state and national boundaries are becoming blurred.
By this physical migration and medical records at this... in its current state cannot penetrate those state and national boundaries.
And lastly, portable medical records that you are in control of and yet that you can take with you, will be required for telemedicine.
You don't want to just talk to the doctors that are in your city, and you actually want the best doctors that are available.
So, you want those experts to have your up-to-date medical records.
And soon you'll be able to do that with just a few taps on your phone, you'll be able to authorize whatever doctor you want to see your current medical records.
And, of course, telemedicine has all the abilities to transform healthcare for people who are not living in privileged areas.
Many regions of the world don't even know what a medical record is.
But if some doctor sees a patient via telemedicine, there's no reason why the next doctor has to reask the same questions and start from scratch.
A global ledger would enable a broad list of people to offer medical support and have a unified patient-centric approach.
So, why would you use blockchain?
The current approach to healthcare medical records is to store them all in big, proprietary databases that individual companies own.
To be sure, I mean like storing medical records is a big security risk and that's why they kind of went this way.
But storing them all in one place is an archaic method of security.
Blockchain itself obviously has been over... has been turning industries on their head as far as rethinking overall approaches.
You know, blockchain is a distributed global database and common data layer that anybody with the right credentials can access and pull data from and build applications upon.
Blockchain also creates that system of trust that can enforce how medical records are transferred.
In that way, that's much quicker and safer than a verbal agreement by doctor saying, "Yes I'll fax it right over".
It can be done instantaneously.
Lastly, blockchain's inherent way for the public to verify each and every transaction is important.
This gives control of your own medical records and you can tell who sees them and who has access to them.
So, on a practical level, how is MedChain going to see and be used by the public.
Well, MedChain is going to be launched in a couple of... multiple phases here.
The first phase is to establish that common data layer, that all existing and future software providers can plug into.
That common data layer, we call the Secure Medical Record Chain.
Subsequent phases will release complementary blockchain networks that can build upon the features on top of MedChain.
For instance, if a patient gives permission, their medical records can be made anonymous and used for research purposes
to see if maybe your reactions to a medication or procedure are within the norms of what patients are experiencing elsewhere.
So, we call this Phase II of the discovery.
Phase II of MedChain which is called the discovery chain that will use off-chain artificial intelligence and machine learning to pore over the millions of records that could span lifetimes.
This simply can't be done with data, if it's locked up in a proprietary database as it is now.
People will interact with MedChain in several different ways.
The Patient dApp, or distributed app, is available free to patients all over the nation and all of the world.
And that's the application where patients can see their medical records, list out everyone who has ever seen them or touch them, and give new providers access, or take away access from old providers.
In future phases, you'll actually be able to schedule doctor's visits, manage insurance bills, and see what that medical artificial intelligence thinks about how you can improve your own health.
The Service Provider dApp, on the other hand, that's the interface for the actual service providers whether that be doctors or hospitals or laboratories.
And this is, you know, where they add files to a patient's medical record.
MedChain is developing a UI that doctors will use to upload files and fill in data fields.
But it'll also be an API for existing software providers to talk directly with the blockchain and storage, and to save new patient data.
This UI gives the provider access to all medical records that have ever been performed for a patient no matter who ordered them.
And at the same time, obviously, it allows the doctor to track their own specific procedures that they prescribed.
And if you remember that AI and data analytics of the Phase II, anonymous medical records, the Service Provider dApp will actually give the doctors access to all that data
about what similar patients are experiencing and that could assist the doctors with making decisions about your own health.
The implementation kind of looks like this, once a doctor receives a new file to add to a patient's medical record, the nodes on the blockchain, the peers, will securely handle all the encryption and file transfers,
handle the utility tokens that are needed, provide storage, generate storage invoices, automatically query the storage market and get the current storage pricing,
reassemble the files and deliver the final products all while complying with the current laws.
Then, as regulations change and get updated, the MedChain blockchain will also evolve to ensure that data is always stored and transferred in a correct and legal compliant manner.
From a Hyperledger Fabric point of view, let's look at it on a graphical level.
Here, in Phase I, you can see multiple blockchains within the MedChain network.
We have a permission and identity chain, a chain that stores metadata about a file, and then a chain that actually stores the storage locations of each of the files after it has been encrypted and fragmented.
And you can see that each of these chains has their associated smart contracts or chain code and ledgers that hold the on-chain data.
You can also see the various players in the network.
The patients, the providers, again, whether they're doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacists, and then the storage providers
and those can be, whether they're existing hospitals already storing data for their patients or in the cloud by third-party providers.
But the data flow kind of goes like this.
The patients give each of their doctors permission to add data to their medical record, the doctors' offices verify the identity of the patient, obviously when they come in for their exam.
The patients generate...
The providers, excuse me, generate new doctor notes or files, such as an x-ray or blood work, and then the provider nodes then encrypt the files, fragment them and store each fragment across the network of storage nodes.
And basically, that's the fully functional Phase I, EMR distributed storage solution.
But on top of that, we can add in Phase II.
And here, the network can be extended in any number of ways actually, but the first one that we're going to do, is anonymous medical records.
So the patients can give their permission to have their... to have researchers use their data, and the data is made completely anonymous by removing all of the personally identifiable information.
And all the new anonymous data is then stored across the storage network in new files.
And then finally, what is MedChain's timeframe for implementing our network.
Currently, the MedChain's DevNet is being developed.
We're doing network configuration, chain code development and the UI development already.
Our BetaNet should be actually ready for next year, second quarter of next year in 2019.
And that's obviously where we'll be able to take on some beta clients.
And then finally, the MainNet, the main network looking to distribute second quarter of 2020, and this is obviously where we can take on the world.
So, in conclusion, I hope this was a good overview of the use case for the healthcare industry.
The MedChain network will store all of your medical records and give you the ability to give those records to whatever doctor you want to instantly and securely.
So thank you from all of us at MedChain.