Meet “MediBloc”: our medical data secured in the blockchain

It has probably happened to most of us, that after a few years of having received a certain treatment, the details of said treatment start to blur out in our mind, making us forget pieces of information that can end up being useful in the coming years, and if a person has the bad luck of not having properly secured his medical data, then it will be very complicate to know with certainty the details of all his past treatments, this can happen especially with people with different disabilities who cannot take care of their own needs and much less be on top of everything that is being done to them because of their health issues.

Medical data is something that every person should always have available and in order, because we never know when we are going to need it due to an emergency or some similar situation, and without it, providing the best care for the individual in question becomes a challenging task.

However, the way this type of information is currently handled is far from being the best, right now there are places where medical data cannot be shared between different entities, which means that if a person needs to go to another clinic or another hospital, it will not be possible to share the results of the previous tests he had in the first entity, and he will need to do those tests again in order to present those results to the second entity. This is obviously an ineffective dynamic that adds costs and makes everyone lose time, and there is the potential risk of receiving an incorrect evaluation caused by a lack of information belonging to another different entity. In short words, the fact that medical information cannot be easily shared between different entities, brings a lot of issues that shouldn’t exist, because this problem can easily be solved by the use of technology and digitization allowing for anyone to responsibly participate in how this data is managed.

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Besides, since the information is secured by a single entity, it is always at risk of being lost due to an accident that destroys files and backups, or it can also be hacked, exposing this delicate and private information to malicious people.

Another issue that is currently present consists in the fact that since medical data is usually dispersed across different institutions, initiatives that wish to analyze this data for research purposes have a much harder time figuring out ways to gain access, instead of investing that time in what is really important, their analysis and the discoveries they can find as a result. Because of this, it is fair to say that the current way of handling this data can make it complicate for innovative solutions to be developed in the medical field.

Therefore, it is clear there is a current need in the market to solve every single one of these issues, and that is exactly what MediBloc is planning to do.

MediBloc is a blockchain project developing a platform where people will be able to store their own medical information, and be in total control over who has access to it, which is a big difference compared to how things are right now, where instead of the individual being the one in control, it is the entity (clinic or hospital) who acts as the owner.

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One of the goals for this project is to serve as a tool to unify the information that is usually in the medical records of any hospital, into a single platform, making it much easier to have access to this information at any time, without any issue nor complication. Sharing information between entities will be done smoothly and always in a secure way thanks to blockchain technology, which is close to impossible to hack, unlike centralized databases that because of their nature, have a single point of failure that knowledgeable hackers can take advantage of.

There has been cases where hospitals were hacked by a virus known as WannaCry, leaving the computers completely blocked with no way of accessing the information unless they made a payment to the hacker, “many hospitals are left unable to access basic medical records. At least one hospital has canceled all non-urgent operations as a result”. | Source

This is something that wouldn’t have happened if the MediBloc’s platform was used, because blockchain technology thanks to its decentralized nature, don’t have a single point of failure when it comes to hacks, and this makes the network much more secure, and allows for the information to be always available.

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Implementing something of this magnitude is not easy, but to ease off the process of adoption when it comes to the different entities, MediBloc will be able to handle data flows coming from commonly used Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems, this will avoid compatibility problems for the hospitals and clinics that wish to participate in this project.

Regarding the patients, they are the ones who will receive the most benefits by adopting MediBloc’s platform, medical information is very sensitive and private, and as was already mentioned, they will be the ones in control of this information, and will be capable of deciding which person and entity can have access to their medical data, there are some exceptions regarding basic information like blood types, that will always be accessible in case of an emergency.

To better control this aspect, there will be different types of account, each one with different types of access as shown below:

However, there will also be the option for them to sell their medical data to initiatives that are currently in need of new information to continue with their investigations, which means people can now be rewarded based on the amount of medical data they add into the platform and how much they are willing to sell. Basically the platform allows for the exchange between having access to private records and the tokens used by the platform, to take place. The token MED can also be used to complete transactions for medical and pharmaceutical payments, insurance payments, among other similar cases.

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Data analysis is important because it allows to identify trends and to detect patterns that could lead to new solutions over certain problems, that is why this data is valuable, and to facilitate the collection of said data, there will be the option to use a smartphone for this, and given the fact MediBloc facilitates the integration of medical information between different entities, as well as encourages people to add more information by allowing them to monetize it, this platform will certainly promote the creation and publication of medical data at a scale never seen before, which should result in faster and better results coming from the research teams currently doing investigations based on this type of data. There will also be a search option to filter out the information that is needed.

When it comes to people who suffer from extremely uncommon diseases, MediBloc’s platform will allow for the creation of communities, so these people can share their experience between each others, and together they can hopefully come to a better understanding about how to handle their situation, besides, research teams can also find this feature very useful because this is a great opportunity to have direct contact with these individuals and increase the amount of data that they have available, which in the case of rare diseases is obviously not much.

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Since this platform is capable of using smart contracts, people won’t have any problem with their insurance policies, because by adding information into the blockchain, smart contracts can be triggered, automatically sending the money covered by the insurance to the person that is requiring it, this will avoid a lot of problems between insurance companies and their clients.

In order for this project to be broadly adopted, people need to realize it really works, which is why the MediBloc team made the smart move of having partnerships with important medical institutions showed in the pictures below, so this platform can gain traction and usage right from the start, and hopefully start adding new users as soon as the platform becomes ready for it.

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The current way in which medical data is handled is ineffective because it makes it very hard to share valuable information between different hospitals and clinics, which have a negative effect in the patient because he will be force to pay for tests that were previously done in another entity, and the care received might not be the best one because there is information stored in another entity that cannot be transferred over the one he is currently visiting.

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Besides, this highly valuable information might be vulnerable to hacks or accidents that can destroy it or leave it without any possible access.

Therefore, by leveraging blockchain technology, MediBloc is providing a platform that solves all of these issues. With MediBloc, the people will be the ones in complete control over their medical data, and they will be the ones deciding who has access to their information, they can even sell this access to research teams so they can keep advancing with their investigations, and thanks to the use of smart contracts, there won’t be any problem when taking advantage of insurance policies because it will all be done automatically.

• If you want to know more about this company, I invite you to visit their website.
• If you want to know more about how this blockchain project works, please feel free to check their whitepaper.
• If you want to read official and informative articles about this project, you can find those here.
• And if you want to get into contact with them, feel free to visit their Facebook , Twitter and Telegram