Introduction

The cryptocurrecy market has seen many different initial coin offerings launched over the last year. Many of theses new market players have presented the industry with disruptive applications of blockchain technology that fufil a specific purpose and today i will be sharing a project in area of medicine.

Challenges faced in the medical industry

It is necessary to keep record of medical records in our modern days society because it is a vital tool for both the patient and the medical practitioner because it helps track previous health history, curtail human mistake and make it easy for doctors to make predictions about outcomes. Unfortunately, transferring of patient medical records isn't possible. In a case of emergency where patients medical records are needed urgently in a different hospital other than the place he opened a medical folder, it might lead to death of patient because a doctor cant work without taking the necessary test on the patient to know the cause of illness. This slows down the medical processes in hospitals, putting patients at risk and on the side of the patient, he has to spend another money in the the test process

Medical information are susceptible to malwares base on the fact that they are stored in a central system. And once this information are attacked by malware, patients might loose a long medical history they have kept for a long time. In most cases, there are no privacy measures whatsoever towards patient medical records which should never be so, this is unethical. Strict privacy laws by government to protect patients records from hackers can also limits the access of patients to there medical history.  

• Are tired of recording your medical history over and over again?
• Are you tired of taking similar medicinal exam each time you go to the specialist?
• Are you weary of hearing missing or damaged medical folders?
• Are you limited to your own medical history due to strict privacy laws that bind records system?

Medibloc is the answer to all this problems. A great platform that allows the patients to have absolute control of their medical records stored in a decentralised blockchain and accessing it through an App from mobile equipment.

Medibloc: Integration of blockchain technology in Medicine

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Medibloc is an open source decentralized personal health record platform in the blockchain that integrates medical records  of a patients from various affiliated medical institutions and updates as change occurs. They aim to overcome the barriers of electronic health data sector by bringing together fragmented pieces of patience data and making platform customer oriented.  With the invention of Medibloc, patients can share their medical history with a third party amd spare them time of waiting for medical centres to retrieve their data before proceeding treatment. . This way, there is a trusted confidentiality of patients' medical history that they can access anytime and anywhere they desire. Medibloc will help to solve the problem of centralization of medical information, security, interoperability, accessibility and other associated ones.

There are several features of Medibloc, they include;

• Maximum security
• High reliability
• High level of transparency
• High interoperability
• High assesbility
• Patient centered Healthcare information system.

With Medibloc, patients being in full control of there medical record, will not only help them receive quick medical attention in times of emergency but will also keep medical practitioners updated of patients medical history to enable him know the diagnosis of previous doctors. Patients with down syndrome or has physical disabilities like blindness, deafness, dumbness etc when presented with accurate medical history assist health care practitioners the right treatment to prescribe to such patients.

Making medical history readily available, enables doctors to know the allergies of certain patient inorder to know the type of drugs to prescribe to the patients condition. This knowlege help the doctor to be sure if the symptoms been complained about are part of new illness or already diagnosed sickness from previous doctors.

The Medibloc account is made up of three accounts that can be created on the medibloc ecosystem. They include:

• Health care providers
• Data researchers
• General users

It is explained further in the table below;

How can this impact the way medical data is used in the medical field and other relevant parties such as insurers and researchers.

Insurers:

Smart contract is a computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify or enforce the negotiation of performance of a contract. (Source: Wikipedia).

Considering the fact that smart contract negotiate and facilitate transaction, it will serve as a security between the patients and the insurance company. Patients would not need to call research institutes to find out if certain diseases or check up will be covered or bother to submit claims after treatment because automated smart contract will cover all check ups and diseases and will enable billing of patients insurance plan according to the medical history provided by the medibloc.

Researchers  

With Medibloc, researchers stand to gain personal experience and reliable information from the horse's mouth (patients) since it is a one-on-one interview between them. This will go a long way in the research and improvement in the health sector. Due to the free flow of information, the medical field will be more connected and will lead to a high growth rate in the research institutes.

It is also necessary for medibloc to establish a solid partnership with major corporations once MainNet is launched because it will help integrate the system and activities will be carried out effectively. This major  corporations serve as nodes and will ensure that there is proper decentralization thereby protecting the data of members in the ecosystem.

Traditional system versus digital system.

• In the traditional system, medical information recorded down on paper is unsafe because it can be destroyed by rodents or fire accidents, unlike on blockchain data storage is secured which protects patients identity to the maximum.  

• One of the major problem with traditional system is the expenses associated with buying this office assesories to keep medical records.  Not only will you need lots of paper - usually in different sizes and shapes - you'll require more printers, stationeries and other office supplies frequently. System becomes greatly efficient through real-time processing and reduced transaction costs since the execution of activities is not given to third-party applications is , so there is no time-lag in accessing data.

• Another challenged faced by traditional system is that, it takes a whole lot of time for medical files to reach its destination if its sent through mail or converted to electronic format such as scanning before it readily assesible but with digital medical records system, medibloc PHR can be shared with medical institution instantly through the blockchain.  

• Storage of medical records with Personal Health Record (PHR) help keeps medical records safe for a very long time and it is protected by blockchain rather than the traditional system that stores file in a warehouse. 

User Case.

Many months ago in the university of portharcourt, there was a peaceful protest by students which later became violent. In order to calm the protest, the police in that jurisdiction poured tear gas. A girl collapsed and was rushed to a nearby teaching hospital. She was breathing so fast, no one had idea of the problem since she has no medical record with them, at some point they lost her. Assuming she has joined medibloc and all her medical record was made readily accessible through the medibloc App in her phone, all she had to do was to show her medical history to thedoctor, and they will know what to do at that moment. At some point, the patient could be invited medical researchers to reward them for med token for the necessary information needed to carry out there research.

Partnerships

Medibloc in such a short while has developed many partnerships with other organizations and platforms ranging from medical centers, other blockchain platforms to world leading organisations, to ensure the maturity and success of this project.
This include 

• Hanyang University Medical Center, 
• Kyung Hee University Dental Hospital
• Deloitte.

Medibloc is now listed on some exchanges like 

• Kryptono, 
• IDEX
• Gate.io.

MediBloc Token

The MediBloc ecosystem runs on two tokens -MED and MEDX. 

Team

More Information & Resources:

• MediBloc Website
• MediBloc WhitePaper (ENG)
• MediBloc FAQ
• MediBloc About ( Contains Media Kit With Various Graphics!
• MediBloc Medium
• MediBloc Twitter
• MediBloc Facebook
• MediBloc Github
• MediBloc Telegram

This is an entry for the @originalworkswriting contest here
All images were adapted from the whitepaper.

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