Introducing Citizen Health

Citizen Health Team
Published in
8 min readFeb 15, 2018

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Citizen Health is building a decentralized universal health collective owned & governed by the people — not corporations or governments.

By applying first principles thinking, we’ve fundamentally redesigned how healthcare is managed, how it’s paid for, and how decisions are made.

Our decentralized health economy is powered by the Ethereum blockchain and our dual token system — a stable currency called Medit “MDT” & a derivative token called Medex “MDX.”

Here’s our plan:

  1. Incentivize people to pursue healthy lifestyles by rewarding them with Medit, our stable currency.
  2. Create a collective governance network of individuals, health care providers, and employers based on liquid democracy, futarchy, and holacracy principles to guide consensus on building a new health system.
  3. Launch our decentralized health & wellness marketplace — a true free market system enabling product & service transactions between consumers and producers with no insurance intermediary. Here you will find physicians, wellness & diagnostic services, personalized nutritional, pharmaceutical, fitness products and much more.
  4. Shift the $1.2 Trillion Americans pay annually for health insurance premiums into crowdfunded & controlled smart contracts. This $1.2 Trillion will be converted into Medit and will be the unit of value, exchange, & utility within our economy. We’re replacing traditional health insurance policies and health savings accounts with our Medit Health Asset (MHA).
  5. Create an open innovation/collaboration engine to seek out and solve the previously unsolvable problems in science and medicine. Using first principles thinking and exponential technology, we’re aiming to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by 2050.

Our Vision

Our vision is to create a global health economy where every man, woman, and child will be healthy and have access to the very best care regardless of social status, economic position, or political views. We will take control of our health and create a prosperous future for ourselves, our children, and future generations.

Our Mission

Our mission is to develop & implement the latest advances in science & technology to cure diseases and increase the quality of life for all humans on Earth.

Our Beliefs

We believe the health of a person is more important than a corporate profit.

We believe health is both a personal and societal responsibility.

We believe the ability to be healthy should not be limited to your occupation, education, income, or geography.

We believe no one should be unhealthy or lack medical care when we have the knowledge, technology, & resources to take care of everyone.

We believe it’s our obligations as humans to use our skills and innovations to benefit humanity.

We believe that the power of the people is greater than the people in power.

How We’re Fixing Healthcare

By eliminating health insurance and all the perverse incentives it brings, we can begin to reimagine healthcare the way it needs to be. We are putting the power back in the hands of the patients & providers by removing the numerous inefficient systems in place that benefit greedy insurance & pharmaceutical companies.

We’re doing this by utilizing smart contracts, crowdfunding mechanisms, and artificial intelligence to create a new financial system that makes healthcare extremely affordable and incentivizes healthy living.

This model applies to every country, even more so in developing countries that have no healthcare infrastructure, but we are starting with the worst one of them all — The United States of America.

Proactive, Personalized Health — Not Reactive, Inefficient Sick Care

With the creation & adoption of newer technologies, we can now begin to look at healthcare from a different perspective — one that focuses on keeping people healthy vs. the sick care we are currently practicing.

Treating a patient after they get sick or injured isn’t inherently bad. Up until now, it is just about the best thing we could be doing. However, now we have the technology that can shift the entire healthcare focus to prevent most illnesses and injuries before they even happen. This takes us from more of the same to something entirely new. Zero to one.

Embracing Technology

Only now has technology brought us to the point where we can focus on curing diseases rather than treating them. To change the paradigm of our current healthcare system, we have to utilize the latest advances in technology to build new business models.

We will be launching and funding open source initiatives for the following fields:

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Blockchain
  • Omic Research (genomic, microbiomic, proteomic, etc.)
  • Nanotechnology
  • Bioelectronic Medicine
  • Augmented & Virtual Reality
  • Medical/IoT Devices & Sensors
  • Drug Synthesis
  • 3D/4D Printing

The Citizen Health Ecosystem

The purpose of the Citizen Health Ecosystem is straightforward: To build a healthcare system 10x better than our current system. With multiple exponential technologies converging in the next few years, we’re about to enable opportunities never financially or technically feasible before.

The Medit Stack

Incentive System

The intent behind the Medit incentive system is to assign value to the previously unvalued tasks performed for the benefit of health. Our incentive structure is designed to create strong motivational pushes for making healthy decisions, like eating clean, exercising, increasing steps, and getting proper sleep.

Using data from popular health and fitness trackers, including products from Fitbit, Garmin, Misfit, Withings (now Nokia), Apple, and Android, our Proof of Health algorithm will calculate the change in the health score of the user over time. From improvement on various metrics, users can earn more Medit, be rewarded with reputation points, increase voting power, and receive discounts for supplements, food, & gym memberships. In summary, we are rewarding users who pursue a healthy lifestyle.

Collective Governance

This is a hybrid of liquid democracy, futarchy, & holacracy. The main objective for this style of governance is to form all decisions based on the best health outcomes possible — not financial gain. All decisions pertaining to Citizen Health will be made on this layer and all token holders can propose, discuss, and vote for these decisions.

Collaboration Engine

Harnessing the power of crowdsourced intelligence, we’ve designed our collaboration engine to engage the power of the crowd on a global platform to focus on solving the hardest problems in science, technology, & medicine.

100% open source & transparent, all research and development will be available for all to see. We are flipping science and medical research upside down and releasing all data.

Developers, Engineers, & Technologists: We will build technology that advances humanity in exponential leaps. This collaboration channel will be similar to a peer-owned Google X. Initial projects will include blockchain, crypto, artificial intelligence, biotech, & nanotech.

Biomedical, Biochemical, Research Scientists, & Related Fields: We will accept proposals, have discussions, vote, and form missions around curing diseases and making humanity live happier, healthier, and longer lives.

Doctors, Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, Dentists, & Related Health Networks: We will form a collaboration group to lay out the plan for pricing, structures, treatment teams/options, etc. This will be an open sourced health network that functions alongside the AAPS (Association of American Physicians and Surgeons), FMMA (Free Market Medical Association), and the Direct Primary Care Coalition. This will also be the foundation for our global health network.

Patient Network: Made up of former patients, current patients, and potential patients, this network will collaborate to discuss, organize, decide, and vote on health needs. In conjunction with the health provider network, this will establish guidelines for treatment, coverage, & payments. This will give patients & providers a real voice and opportunity to create a system in which they want to be a part of.

Health Intelligence

By replacing health insurance, we eliminate the need for 80% of what EMRs (Electronic Medical Records) are used for, which is to document events in detail in order to bill insurance companies for maximum profit. Now we can utilize technology to its fullest and create a tool that actually helps medical professionals.

Our Health Intelligence will serve as the next evolution of software used by doctors. The goal is to create a system where the doctor never needs to touch a keyboard or mouse when they are with a patient. We all know the experience of seeing a doctor for 10 minutes with the doctor clicking and typing on their computer screen half the time. This will stop with our technology.

Trained by the doctors on Citizen Health and from a global cloud of user generated health records, genomic data, microbiomic data, and data from health trackers and wearables, we’re building a global brain that will assist us in curing diseases.

Mega Fund

This P2P mega fund consists of cryptocurrencies collected from monthly memberships, charitable donations, investments from businesses and governments, and from token sales. These funds will pay & reward doctors, patients, developers, scientists, engineers, and other participants.

Health & Wellness Marketplace

Here you will find physicians, wellness & diagnostic services, personalized nutritional, pharmaceutical, fitness products and much more. This is a true free market system that enables product & service transactions between consumers and producers with no insurance intermediary.

Health Data Vault

We believe you should own your health data and this is the place it’s stored. The user will be able to set permission & access levels for various medical networks. In the situation of a medical emergency where a user is non-responsive and without identification, multiple biometrics and verification from the user’s trusted personal network will unlock all health records to be used in potentially saving a life.

In Summary

By applying first principles thinking, we’re fundamentally redesigning how healthcare is managed, how it’s paid for, and how decisions are made.

  1. We have developed a Proof of Health algorithm to quantify, tokenize, and improve health outcomes.
  2. We are incentivizing people to pursue healthy lifestyles by rewarding them Medit.
  3. We are replacing traditional health insurance and health savings accounts with our Medit Health Asset (MHA).
  4. We are building a Health Intelligence for health professionals that utilizes blockchain tech, AI, and crowdsourced data.
  5. We are creating a collaborative community to solve the biggest problems in science, medicine, & technology.

Next Steps

Join our Slack group and follow us on Twitter @CitizenHealthio to get a conversation going.

-The Citizen Health Team

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Citizen Health Team

We’re building an open health economy designed to elevate the health & prosperity of humanity.