Filling out paperwork at every doctor: 1st world problem or serious issue?
Do you ever wonder why you have to fill out the same forms at every doctor’s office? Do you wish that you could just give the doctor office your MedID, for instance, and they could access all your information automatically? Do you realize that unless your doctor is diligent, they won’t have potentially life saving info from other doctors you have seen?
Now let’s go into the world of your prescription drugs! This is my domain so I can really tell you what is wrong. Let’s picture a typical grandma who may have around 3–5 medications that are very important for her health. Now your grandma gets sick, god forbid, and you go to her regular pharmacy to fill an antibiotic. Unfortunately, they do not have it in stock so you are forced to go to a different pharmacy which she has never been to BUT they don’t have any of her information. So you call grandma and get her insurance card information and get her allergy information. The first part is okay but is it possible that your 70/80 year old grandma may not remember her potentially life saving allergy information? The struggles don’t end here…
All your health information from the doctors, pharmacy and hospitals is stored in separate and hopefully secure servers like you see to the left. The problem is none of these servers “talk” to each other. So when you go to that other pharmacy to fill an antibiotic for grandma the new pharmacy does not know what information is on the old pharmacy's servers. This means potential drug interactions which could in many cases cause great harm to grandma are not being addressed.
Just like this grandpa and grandma are talking, we need our computer systems to start talking! In one word this is called interoperability and not only does grandma need this but every person and our system needs this to become truly efficient. The other benefit of all your health data talking to each other is that all your health data can be analyzed much easier that way. This is where AI and technology like blockchain comes in.
I was doing research last week on blockchain EMRs to see if they exist and I found this company which is about to disrupt the entire healthcare industry. MedChain is a company which plans on using blockchain technology to connect all your health information together in a secure fashion. The beautiful thing that will happen is the ability for you to give access to an AI like IBM’s Watson which is essentially an AI doctor. This type of AI can analyze your health information and figure out patterns and make suggestions which has been proven to be better than any doctor. Read the following article:
You have access to all your banking information on various apps and there are great consolidators of that data like Mint.com so why don’t you have that with precious information like your health records? Why do we let potentially life saving data sit in servers which hoard that data and in some cases sell that data for profit? The following article will piss you off!
Like The Beastie Boys taught us in the 90s, You Gotta Fight, For Your Right, To Records! MedChain is a company that is fighting for that right now and we should all support these businesses with our voices. We already have AI that is powerful enough to analyze your health data to find illness and suggest treatments that is better than your doctors so let’s supply these AI’s with what they are craving.
Fractals and algorithms can be found in the structures of these plants to the left or in spiral galaxies or an infinite number of systems in the universe. The thought I will leave you is what patterns will we find when all our health data is sitting together being analyzed by AI engines? The way medicine has worked in the past is not very personalized because of the limitation of large data samples. If companies like MedChain are able to securely and efficiently consolidate our data together not only will it save you some paperwork at each doctor’s office but it might also save your life time and time again.
Remember, fight for your right!
