How We Can Build It

​

Coalescence of ideas

Identification of founding team members

Definition of principals and desired outcomes

White Paper Elaboration

Mobile and web browser interface development

Ethereum blockchain integration

Integration onto the IPFS

End-user testing

Refinement of platform

Pilot execution

Documentation

Learning and iteration

Fundraising

Scale

​

How it works for the clinic/hospital:

1)    Simple, intuitive mobile application to enable hospitals/clinics to create and access patient medical records
2)    Patient is asked if he/she agrees to have data shared with 3rd party at creation of patient file
3)    QR code sticker is printed and put on the patient’s current medical booklet
4)    Medical practitioner scans QR code, opens up patient’s file (QR code serves as key?)
5)    If previous records exist, practitioner can obtain access (as QR code has already been scanned it’s assumed the patient is present and consents to access)
6)    Medical practitioner creates new record
7)    Enters following data:
a.    Temp, weight, height, blood pressure, etc.
b.    Symptoms
c.    Tests with outcomes
d.    Diagnoses
e.    Any prescriptions
8)    Summary info of visit printed on thermal printer to be stapled into medical booklet
9)    Photos of printouts, or of affliction can be taken and added if desired
10)    Web interface provided to hospital managers to oversee actions taken within application (to monitor prescriptions, tests, etc.)
11)    Additional functionality could be layered on top (i.e. payment management for services? Queue management?)
a.    Some additional function is likely necessary to encourage adoption, otherwise many may feel that entering data into EHRs is cumbersome and not worth their effort
12)    Key feature: Use of platform must be free for the hospital/clinic to ensure that it can penetrate into areas where consultation fees are as low as $0.50

 

How it works for the larger blockEHR community:

1)    Each clinic/hospital (hereafter referred to as “client clinic”) must first register with blockEHR centralized entity (legitimate non-profit entity on ground)
2)    blockEHR would have constitution specifying certain voting rights of blockEHRtoken owners (board seat voting)
3)    Each client clinic has a registered head (i.e. director) who’s fingerprint scan is taken to enable for secure voting later
4)    For each medical record created, a client clinic is awarded a single token “blockEHR token”
5)    Medical records that are created are advertised to the outside world, but only metadata is able to be seen (# of records per clinic, etc.)
6)    When a 3rd party entity wishes to gain access to data (insurance company, research organization, etc.) that entity must submit a request detailing why they wish to gain access
a.    This should be in very clear language, easy to understand, may include agreement for payment
7)    Client clinics (i.e. directors) are able to vote on a request, simple yes or no with no quorum with each client clinic having weight equal to proportion of owned blockEHR tokens at that time
8)    With a yes vote, 3rd party is given key to gain access to data up to the point at which the purchase was made (any data created after purchase would not be included and would need to be purchased again later)
9)    Any payment made would be equally distributed across all blockEHR token holders

 

How the tech might work:

1)    IPFS hosted medical records
a.    Within a client clinic, this means that medical records would be already hosted locally on the various member’s devices during the next visit of the patient
b.    If possible, clinics would already be pre-populating shared dataset (encrypted) so that the medical records are already stored locally in the new clinic in the case when the patient moves to a nearby clinic for different treatment later
c.    In either case, low latency could be achieved by pulling data from clinics likely less than ~50 km away
d.    When 3rd parties gain access, they would also further strengthen resiliency by hosting the data
e.    In early stages, a centralized server set up as an IPFS node may be set up temporarily
f.    Hosting on IPFS and pre-emptively sharing data between nearby clinics will ensure that clients have availability of their medical records when they go to a new hospital even if government has blocked ISPs or access to centralized servers
2)    Voice to text recognition
a.    Even if utilizing centralized service (like Google Cloud TPU) integrating voice-to-text in the symptoms/tests/diagnoses etc. would streamline adoption
b.    This would go down if ISP is blocked
3)    Simple android interface
4)    Database management???
5)    Handling payments by 3rd parties and distributing across owners of blockEHR tokens???

​

​

Role of the centralized entity:

1)    Development and support of platform
2)    Registration of client clinic users initially
3)    Marketing and scale of user platform
4)    Marketing data
5)    Fundraising
6)    Legal action
 

​

​