Inside Medicalchain Issue #14
Welcome to the fourteenth issue of Inside Medicalchain, our monthly newsletter to keep our community up to date.
If you missed the thirteenth issue, you can catch up by clicking here.
Product Development
Want to help? Give us feedback! As always, please continue to download our iOS version of MyClinic.com and let us know your feedback on our current version by sending in your comments to [email protected].
We are hard at work developing MyClinic.com V2. This next release will add a whole heap of further functionality. Some highlights include:
- An advanced booking engine so that users can book clinical services at the right time and place.
- Multi-service functionality so that users can find the right service they are looking for, from a GP telemedicine consultation to travel vaccination appointment.
- Family friendly features that are built-in so users can share information between themselves, family and friends, if they wish.
Here are some screenshots of the upcoming MyClinic.com release:
We also have two videos that show how it all looks.
From the patient’s view:
From the clinician’s view:
This full release of MyClinic.com will soon be available to download on both iOS and Android, and open to sign up! We would encourage our community to download and test these versions of the application as your feedback will be vital. Stay tuned for our announcements!
We are also making good progress through tendering applications in the NHS to deliver online services for UK patients. This will further solidify ourselves as a digital health solution within the UK.
Media
Our CEO, Dr Abdullah Albeyatti, was interviewed by Disruptor Daily on how we are using blockchain to transform healthcare, and what the future of the industry holds. Check it out here.
Inside perspective
This section will provide an insight into the project, including the people behind the scenes who are working extremely hard to make our vision a reality.
At Medicalchain we have a brilliant team of engineers and developers who are making our dream a reality by building world-class blockchain applications and software.
Jay Povey is one of our Blockchain Developers at Medicalchain and has been with us since the very beginning.
We asked Jay some questions so you can learn a little bit about him and his work here!
What work do you do at Medicalchain?
My team and I are currently exploring infrastructures such as a private-permissioned blockchain along with other services to pull together a complete immutable and verifiable history of a patient’s medical record from multiple sources. This includes existing non-interoperable health care systems to medical devices and consumer wearables. Overall, we are putting the patient in control of their data so that they are free to share their data with any entity or practitioner they choose whilst keeping track of where and how their data is being used.
What is it like working in a health blockchain startup?
It is very challenging and not for the faint of heart. We have a huge challenge ahead of us, improving the current health record system is no easy feat and as blockchain technologies are still in their infancy a lot of R&D is required to achieve the goal of a unified global health record system.
As a developer, I enjoy being presented with very difficult (sometimes seemingly impossible) problems and coming up with innovative solutions to solve them. This makes a health blockchain start-up a perfect and exciting place to work!
What is the most challenging aspect of working at Medicalchain?
Blockchain technology is an amazingly inventive technology that can solve various problems for many use-cases. However, it is not very user friendly for the standard consumer who may not necessarily understand its benefits. The most challenging part of what we are trying to achieve is to subtly introduce blockchain technology into existing paradigms. Private keys should always be held in a decentralised way as handling key management server-side leads to the current risks we have with centralized systems. How we can ensure better security than current systems whilst keeping them easy to use for the consumer (i.e. ease of use versus security) is probably the most challenging part of working at Medicalchain.
How do you see software influencing healthcare in the future?
Currently obtaining all of your medical data is cumbersome and sometimes impossible. Medical data is mostly siloed, duplicated, vendor locked and un-interoprable. For example, in the UK if you have visited multiple GP’s and hospitals you would have to go to each GP and hospital individually to ask for your medical data, which is typically printed on paper and handed to you.
In the future you will be able to have one app that can collate all of your medical data and store it all in one place on your device. You will be able to visit any medical practice across the world and instantly share your data with the practitioner which will enable them to give you the best care/ treatment that you need.
You will also be able to donate or license your own data to medical research, which will enable researchers to have new wealth of verifiable accurate data which can help improve outcomes and save lives.
For example, my friend once had to call the ambulance. On arrival, the ambulance staff had to ask questions including “Where is your GP?” “What are your allergies?” “Have you had any previous heart conditions?” This process took around 20 minutes.
At the end of the 20 minutes, a 5 minute assessment was carried out at which point he was deemed to be okay and that it was just a panic attack. He was then taken to hospital just to ensure nothing more serious was happening. At this point he was asked the same questions as he was by the ambulance staff!
With technology such as ours, where medical staff can have instant access to your whole medical history, it would cut down time because staff would have all the required information at their hands. This would free up emergency staff time so they can respond to more cases, more efficiently and potentially save more lives.
Events
Our team have been exhibiting at Blockchain Live 2019, where they were busy all day answering brilliant questions from the blockchain community on Medicalchain and MyClinic.com. You can see the stand here and the set up!
Our Research Fellow, Dr Danyal Akarca, was at Bradford University for West Yorkshire and Harrogate Paediatric Ambulatory Care Network Meeting talking about an exciting new project that we hope to be formally announcing soon!
Upcoming Events
- Our CEO, Dr Abdullah Albeyatti, will be speaking at Healthcare+ Expo in Taiwan this December! We are really looking forward to this prestigious event.
- Our Research Fellow Dr Danyal Akarca will be in Monaco at the BAPRAS Winter Scientific Meeting 2019, discussing blockchain-secure health passports. His talk is titled “Patient-centrism in an age of AI: how to empower patients and enable ethical digital health”. You can check out his abstract here.
Social Media
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to ask us questions and engage with our communications team. If you have not had the chance to say hello yet, please click on one of the links!
Join a Medicalchain Community Today!
· Telegram (English)
· Telegram (Japanese — Medicalchain 日本公式コミュニティ)
· Telegram (Chinese — Medicalchain 官方中文群)
· Telegram (Italian — Medicalchain Italia)
· Telegram (Korean — Medicalchain 공식채팅방)
· Twitter (Japanese)
· Medium
· Youtube
Don’t forget to sign up for your free healthcare passport
The Medicalchain Health Passport signup is live! Prospective patients and medical practitioners can register their interest now, by clicking here.
Upcoming Issues
- MyClinic.com V2 — Coming very soon!
- Partnerships within the NHS and private sector
- Thanks for reading the fourteenth newsletter of Inside Medicalchain. For more information on where to purchase our tokens (MTN), click here.
Follow the development of Medicalchain on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and join the community on Telegram.
