Medicalchain

Medicalchain is an electronic health record platform powered by a dual blockchain, smart contracts and their own cryptocurrency, "MedTokens". It was founded by Dr. Abdullah Albeyatti and Mo Tayeb in early 2016. Medicalchain completed its ICO on February 1, 2018 raising $24 million. It plans to enable patients to own their healthcare data themselves on the blockchain. The objective is to provide a secure data storage in which it consolidates patient records from various sources.
These exchanges are fully based on the approval of the patients who control the data to be shared, the access duration and which medical stakeholder can modify the records. It is thus a decentralized platform as there is no single authority who holds control over all data as solely the owner has the power over it. Consequentially, the role of patients as important stakeholders in their medical care is strengthened. However, the patient cannot modify his or her own patient history or future records.
History
Work on Medicalchain began with Dr. Abdullah Albeyatti in 2016. Dr. Albeyatti found that there were significant issues involved with the notes that were made when patients were being discharged out of the hospital and back to their general practitioner. These notes, formally known as discharge summaries, contain vital information about why a patient was in the hospital, what was done, and why they were discharged. They are often written in freeform text by doctors and subject to a plethora of errors, such as omission of drug prescription. These errors ultimately low outcomes, raise costs, and are a liability for hospitals.
Dr. Albeyatti addressed this by co-founding Discharge Summary with Bara Mustafa, a digital work flow tool for creating discharge summaries. Their tool generated accurate and timely notes when patients are sent home and was deployed in Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. Discharge summary demonstrated the power of digital health to lower costs and improve outcomes to Dr. Albeyatti. Next, he sought to apply this insight to a broader problem, disparate health systems that disempower patients. Dr. Albeyatti and Mo Tayeb realized that blockchain technology had the potential to solve this problem, founded Medicalchain, and recruited Jay Povey and Robert Miller.
Since then Medicalchain has undergone key developments. Medicalchain went on a roadshow, showcasing its ideas and technology around the world at forums like the Mayo Clinic, Financial Times Digital Health Summit, and Blockchain Labo. They were a top ICO on several rating websites for months and generated a large amount of interest. Medicalchain conducted an Initial Coin Offering and completed this on February 1. Medicalchain is now focused on production and has plans to go worldwide by 2019.
It launched a partnership to pilot the technology with the Groves Medical Group, a large general practice in Kingston upon Thames in March 2018. The organisation has four GP practices, eight full-time partners and 18 salaried doctors as well as specialist nurses. There are over 30,000 registered NHS patients and 1,000 private patient families. Cryptocurrency will be accepted as payment for private health services. There are plans to develop other pilot projects in China, Japan and South Korea.
Structure and process flow
The blockchain structure
The Medicalchain platform is a closed and private blockchain. The structure is provided by Hyperledger Fabric and it is used to manage the storage of and access to health records. Every individual transaction is booked on the platform’s ledger to uphold transparency.
Stakeholder identification
The functionality of the platform requires thorough and secure identity checks to grant each person the appropriate level of access. Medicalchain collaborates with Civic and its Secure Identity Platform to manage the identification process and to avoid identity theft. A researcher would only have reading rights, while a practitioner would have both reading and editing rights given that he or she had obtained patient approval. A patient does not have editing rights to avoid the risk of record tempering, but he or she may still update personal data as sports behavior and could also incorporate IoT data into these records.
MedTokens
Exchanges on the platform are arranged through a newly created cryptocurrency, MedTokens, Ethereum-run ERC20 tokens operating as smart contracts that organize the transfers and application development. The platform records and verifies all token transactions. The smart contract function allows users to program processes, e.g. billing, on to the platform resulting in a fully automated network. Along this marketplace, there are various Available Programming Interfaces, which encourage developers to create decentralized healthcare applications . At first, Medicalchain will link wearables and the Apple HealthKit to the platform later following with other IoT-related functions.<ref name=":5" />

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