🦠A Better System for Care

User Control

In the current healthcare system, patients have their health information spread over multiple systems, hospitals, networks and potentially countries. There are multiple fragmented records from the same patient, held at different institutions all with their own snapshot of the patient’s health at the point of their interaction with them, such as blood tests, imaging and clinic letters. HealthLink will chronologically arrange all of these records and filter them into the specific categories above to aid data handling. Such a categorisation would make the records more accessible and understandable for patients and it will also facilitate researchers in searching for the information relevant to them.

The user will have the capability to provide differing levels of access to various users, by assigning a set of access permissions and designating who can query and write data to their blockchain, and for how long.

Approved clinicians on the HealthLink platform will have the ability to ‘read and write’ on the patient’s records. Moreover, the HealthLink platform will provide the users with a full log of who has access to their medical data, the time of access and the particular types of data that can be accessed.

Data Security

The HealthLink system uses a double encryption mechanism on a closed, permission-based blockchain. The security of health records is secured beyond any centralised data system currently in use. Patient data is not accessible directly on the blockchain. The blockchain acts as a pointer to where patient data is held in an encrypted format, meaning that anyone attempting to intercept patient data will be unable to with the ease that is required to access data existing in any central location.

User Centric Model

In the current healthcare system, patients have their health information spread over multiple systems, hospitals, networks and potentially countries. There are multiple fragmented records of the same patient, held at different institutions with their own snapshot of the patient’s health during their interaction with them such as blood tests, imaging, and clinic letters. HealthLink will order and filter all of these records into a chronological order and the specific categories above to aid data handling. Such categorisation would make the records more accessible and understandable for patients, and also facilitate researchers in seeking out the information important to them.

Health Data Revolution

Bold companies like 23 and Me, Fitbit, Apple, Nest, and Qardio are rapidly innovating to expand the frontier of the data that is collectable. We already have remarkable access to anatomic, biological, environmental, genomic, phenomic and physiological data. New ideas and technologies will only move this frontier further. If we can connect these disparate data sources, then caregivers and researchers will have unprecedented insight into patient’s lives. Ultimately this will lead to lowered costs, better patient outcomes and better research.

HealthLink will start by integrating with Apple HealthKit and common wearables, before moving to add support for diagnostic tests, IoT, and other digital health. Patients and their doctors will have the ability to view this data along with their electronic health record.

Patient Safety

A patient can generally grant or decline healthcare professionals access to their records. However, in the event of an emergency and with the patient incapacitated, there must be an ability to view certain information in order to provide the best possible care. The most vital information needed in an emergency would be the patient’s name, their next of kin, medications, allergies and any advanced decisions they may have made. Patients using the HealthLink platform will have the ability to select in advance which areas of their records can be viewed in an emergency situation. In the case that the patient is incapacitated or unconscious and unable to grant access to their records, the emergency bracelet the patient is wearing would be scanned to unlock this information. Two clinicians would have to agree that given the situation, access to this information without the patient’s explicit consent was clinically in the patient’s best interest. To be clear, a patient’s entire record would not be unlocked, but only information that would be vital in an emergency situation and the patient had prior agreed to sharing in such a situation. To unlock this information, two doctors would need to scan the emergency bracelet the patient is wearing, or their wearable device which would unlock access to these key parts of their medical records. This would enable clinicians to provide the best care possible to a patient in an emergency situation based on their pre-authorised sample of relevant data.

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