Decentralized health care contracts

Hello Cardano Team,

To the best of my ability I will try to keep this project suggestion to the basics and not go too deeply into the nursing/ healthcare informatics or healthcare politics. Also, this is a heavily based in the US systems as a suggestion and I am unsure of how this would apply internationally as care systems across the world vary greatly.
It is no secret in the medical field that a lot of healthcare workers have become unhappy with their work within the current structures; lack of care, financial incentives, follow through, bending of union contracts, in effective union follow through, forced in to unsafe conditions, and feeling of being let down by advocacy organizations has caused many to leave the field, seek travel/ contracted work, or attempt to start their own consultation groups. This problem will soon be exacerbated in the near future as larger healthcare organizations try to consolidate after loss and closure of brick and mortar sites happen become more frequent and larger organizations absorb small failing ones. This will further cause job dissatisfaction with healthcare workers that have already been through so much at this time as well as decrease access to care for many Americans. There is a lot of desire to have more control and freedom of practice, however regulations, safe guards, and access to technology and systems greatly limits a lot of the possibilities of independent practice. Leaving many to choose between short term contracts negotiated through 3rd parties that take commission, or working for large organizations that no longer offer job safety, security, or healthy work environments.
However, I feel that security, safe guards, regulatory compliance, as well as adequate storage and transmission of health data can be achieved through blockchain technology that could potentially enable licensed individuals to contract with either people in need of services, other professionals (nurse to provider etc) or small or large businesses needing workers and be able to do it with compliance and safety at the center of everything. This could help put control of services more in the control of those seeking care (ie access to nursing care in a remote rural setting for a person with a chronic condition outside of going through the wait times and lack of options of the one provider in their area… this would be especially useful for rural mental health care to open options of provider choices that doesn’t involve receiving services from someone you know in your community.) In short, nurses and providers want more autonomy and control over their work situations and the pandemic has highlighted flaws with in our current system and more fully protect their professional license but we are in need of better ways to independently practice and contract as well as we have an accessibility of care problem for consumers. Healthcare is only as good as you have access to it, right now a lot of Americans have limited access and options. There is also the appeal of receiving care in a more personalize or at home manner that doesn’t involve travel to another place to receive care. I feel the same technology that could put individuals back into control of their finances can be expanded to put people back into control of their health care and providers/ professionals back into control of their practices. It would be nice to see people and developers open to exploring this possibility, as unfortunately, I am more skilled at caring for people than developing technology. I think the future of healthcare looks different than anything we have seen yet as what we have now may not remain sustainable and I would love to see it grow into something new and great than crumble.

Thanks for talking the time to read!

B

9 Likes

I think there are many who share this dream with you… But it will take some time to organize teams of health professionals and blockchain developers to build it out with decentralized governance… You might want to get in touch with Emurgo and see if what they are working on.

Here’s a few links on the topic:

http://medichain.online/

2 Likes

Hi Brittany,
I would love to connect with you to discuss this.

1 Like

I’m interested in helping or seeing how I can be of service. I have a healthcare background in business and management. Feel free to contact me if not too late.

1 Like

Hi @Brittany_Richards! I would urge you not to enter any agreements with developers too quickly. Many developers are desperate for a good idea and a connection outside of their own specialization that they will represent things too rosy. At the same time, you might feel dependant on them. As you explained, you have no technical skills, but believe me when I tell you you’re not that helpless.

There is a lot that you can do yourself. The most necessary step is to organize with peers, doctors and other healthcare professionals into a group with the connections needed for fundraising, marketing, sales, etc. In that group, you will also need a technical profile.

Now comes the hard part: how can you know you have capable people around you? In my opinion, critical partnerships should be evidence-based. I am currently being trained in collecting such evidence based on peer-reviewed adult development science. Based on the complexity of one’s meaning and sense-making, you can predict whether or not a person would be up to the task of tackling a project with immense complexity. I can offer you the first half and in a few months the other half of such assessments free of charge. The only cost to you is that I collect and keep the anonymized data as I attempt to scale such assessments using technology.

I offer the same to other groups forming in the Cardano ecosystem, provided that I align with their project’s purpose.

Welcome to the community and I would love to catch up asap. Are you in discord or any other chat option? Are you in ideascale?

Fantastic. Yes, I share your dream. I have posted on this separately in this forum and LinkedIn and it is great to see community interest on this topic growing.

I am a physician and entrepreneur and know that the type of crypto-blockchain-healthcare platform we need requires significant resources with a systems team approach - we must start somewhere, and willing to help however I can.
Cheers!

What is the best way for us to connect? If we can build the medical provider network, then we can skip insurance and provide contract for services.

Are you on discord?

I am not on discord but can join - send link

I am on discord

PraveenKPandu#1637

Hi Praveen here is my invite link to Discord

Here is my group chat invite