Patientory — Connecting Electronic Medical Records through Blockchain? A complete review.
As stated in my last post here electronic health records (EHR) are one of the first problem blockchain has tackled in the healthcare industry.
Like most startups, Patientory’s beginnings stem from the concern from someone about a particular issue. Patientory’s founder set out to develop a platform that can help facilitate the use of Blockchain in some of the most crucial operations of the healthcare industry — the handling of patient information. It is developing a platform to securely store and manage health information in real time.
Patientory’s founder and CEO Chrissa McFarlane saw the challenges of managing patient data while she worked at a telemedicine company that handled such matters.
“They would fax it and it would take weeks to send it to us. In starting Patientory, I was focused on creating a more patient-centric solution that would empower patients to use their information in their benefit in order to live a more quality lifestyle” McFarlane said.
Chrissa proceeded to create Patientory in 2015 which is now based in Atlanta.
Problem to be solved
Physicians have a love-hate relationship with the electronic health record (EHR). On one hand, doctors know they can’t provide the best possible medical care without them. On the other, today’s EHR systems are
cumbersome, clunky and slow physicians down.
Indeed, there’s much to love and much to hate about today’s EHRs, alongside a variety of ways to address the problems they create.
Information is power. Electronic health records give doctors (somewhat) fast, reliable and secure access to patient medical histories, prescription records and past test results. With this data, several integrated, multi-specialty medical groups like Mayo Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare and Kaiser Permanente have shown remarkable improvements in quality. Specifically, comprehensive EHRs have helped them reduce medical errors, shorten inpatient stays and produce better clinical outcomes.
Simply put, hundreds of thousands of deaths from heart attacks, strokes and cancer could be prevented each year if every American had access to the level of high-quality care these EHR systems enable.
Have you ever asked yourself, “Who owns my medical information?” What about, “Who controls it?”
If your medical data is kept in your local physician’s office computer data, the answer is that the doctor both owns and controls it. And in that case, none of your records are “comprehensive” or immediately accessible to providers outside of your doctor’s office.
Now, imagine you suffer a heart attack or stroke while visiting relatives out of town. Naturally, the hospital or emergency department (ED) caring for you will call your doctor to request your records, because they don’t want to (a) give you a drug that will negatively interact with another medication you’re taking or (b) order a laboratory test you have already had, thus delaying treatment until the result comes back.
What usually happens next is mind boggling: The life-saving information kept on your doctor’s computer will most likely be transmitted to the hospital via fax (for readers born after 1980, here’s a Wikipedia entry that explains what a fax machine is). So, even if your information is entered into an office EHR, it is usually printed and faxed when another doctor or ED needs it.
But what if you receive your care from a group of doctors — say, a multi-specialty medical group that shares a common EHR? In that case, your data is available to all the physicians in that group. But when you require care elsewhere, the same problem surfaces. As strange as it sounds, even doctors in other hospitals and emergency departments, using the same EHR system, usually can’t see your data without undergoing several time-consuming steps. There simply is no convenient way for you to “hand over” your records to other doctors who might be caring for you.
It’s hard to imagine any consumer relinquishing this much control of their finances to a broker or banker. It’s your money and you want to manage it as you see fit. But in medicine, even though it’s your life and your health, your information belongs to (and is controlled by) your care provider.
On top of that, last year, WannaCry showed us how vulnerable centralized data is; dozens of hospitals lost complete or partial access to theirs. Whilst that data was not diffused to the rest of the world, it remains that patients & physicians lost valuable information that could have been protected on the blockchain.
Patientory’s solution
Public Beta launched on the 1st of June with a focus on the U.S.A. while also having international health systems in their pipeline
Patientory aims to empower patients, clinicians and healthcare organizations to safely access, store and transfer information. The end result is improved care coordination and better data security.
To accomplish those goals, Patientory interconnects with any electronic health records (EHR) system, then enables doctors, care providers and consumers to communicate across a single, easy-to-use platform. Patients can also easily connect with the platform to form a larger community.
Blockchain is used to provide end-to-end encryption while adhering to regulatory guidelines and compliance requirements.
Some of the core features of the platform include:
- Encrypted middleware to meet the high-volume demands of modern day health IT
- APIs with electronic health records for fast medical information transfer
- HIPAA-compliant protected health information storage that adheres to region-specific regulatory guidelines
Overall, Patientory believes blockchain technology is the most secure way of preventing your patients’ sensitive health information from cyber attacks. The blockchain shreds and encrypts a patient’s medical record before spreading it across the network until it’s ready to be used again.
This makes data breaches virtually impossible. Even if one node on the blockchain was completely compromised, the attacker would only receive one random bit of encrypted information about a patient. Using a decentralized system instead of a centralized server makes attacks unlikely.
I, personally, think their solution incorporates the best of both worlds. Completely replacing major centralized solutions is out of the question; Blockchain is used to greatly improve connectivity and anonymity.
Lastly, with new privacy laws in Europe (RGPD) patients must have the ability to delete their data. By design, such a feat is impossible on the blockchain, therefore having a hybrid solution combines the best of both worlds.
Team & Partnerships
4 members, 2 board members - I can’t imagine such a big problem being tackled by a team this size. Most of the staff have been around for less than 6 months, a major issue for any startup. That extensive of a turnover for a young company is disconcerting to say the least.
What’s equally concerning is the team’s experience in blockchain and the healthcare industry… or lack thereof that is.
I don’t want to judge too harshly; however, my thought is that having a dozen advisors with 6 team members doesn’t succeed. Working in healthcare, I understand how conservative the field can be, hence the need to work with advisors. Nonetheless you can’t act like a Fortune 500 company when you are a startup.
With such a small list (see above), you can’t say partnerships are Patientory’s forte. I would like to see major actors in that list as well as healthcare providers (John Hopkins University, Georgia State Healthboard, hospitals, clinics…)
They’ve inflated their partnerships mutiple times, pretending to have a bigger reach than what they actually have.
e.g. in their FAQ:
“Is Kaiser still an equity holder? Colorado Permanente Medical Group in conjunction with Boomtown HealthCare Accelerator was an early investor in Patientory, and are affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.”
Come on! That smells bad from Atlanta to Europe.
Roadmap & Marketing
Future at Patientory is not crystal clear: Too many things are listed as “coming” and FDA approval has been removed. They apparenly even need 4 months to port their IOS app to Android. It does seem like getting work done at Patientory is difficult.
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance is on the roadmap; however, as it is a basic requirement of any EMR handlers, until we’ve seen proof of compliancy it is hard to imagine a future.
PR (public relation) wise, Patientory has behaved in the way of an old school major corporation; being condescending. I suspect this is the reason the team has been completely overhauled. The best example of their communication issue is to be found on this Reddit thread: Link
Thankfully, their communication on social media is much smoother and has greatly improved since then. Looking forward, I wish to see a better website with clearly stated facts instead of disguised arguments & promotions.
PTOY & Patientory stiftung
Patientory is linked to $PTOY, their native token.
Is there a need for a dedicated token?
“Patients are given an allotted amount of space to store information for free on the Patientory network. PTOY allows them to purchase extra storage space from nodes set up in hospitals systems. PTOY can be purchased via the platform or an exchange.
Healthcare organizations use PTOY in this instance as well. It is also used in payments once smart contracts are executed with healthcare insurance companies and serves as a mechanism to regulate value based model metrics”
As we can read in their whitepaper, it seems that there is a need for their own blockchain & token. The price now is purely speculative as the token is useless without a working product. I like their idea on how to use their token, and I would also love to see a buyback option added.
Patientory stiftung is a “global nonprofit healthcare member organization, that connects healthcare industry adopters of disruptive healthcare technologies”
Why Patientory created a stiftung is still unclear to me.
I haven’t seen any accomplishment or any other company partnering with their organization.
Being based in Zug, Switzerland doesn’t help their image as we know the low taxes there (14%) and crypto friendliness. Money transfers are a great concern of mine.
Competition
Centralized solutions (by revenue)
GE healthcare: $19 Billion
Cerner: $3.4 Billion
Epic: $1.7 Billion
Allscripts: $1.55 Billion
Athenahealth: $1.22 Billion
…
Solutions on the blockchain
MedicalChain
Medichain
Medibloc
…
Competition in the EHR space is increasing with new blockchain start-ups arising alongside blockchain divisions within large companies.
As they had so many problems launching, they lost their first mover advantage. I still think they have the potential to improve patient’s life; however, I’m concerned by their previous inability to score points.
What’s your thoughts on Patientory and the EHR space?
Keep tuned for more reviews coming soon.
Thanks for reading!
