A medical administration expert with an interest in healthcare innovation is asking clinical professionals and others to consider how brand-new blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies could reinvent healthcare.
This month, Dr. Gordon Jones, the co-founder, president and COO of the Universal Health Coin, is sending emails to journalists and others about UHX and its potential place in healthcare services.
“Imagine reallocating the inefficient waste in a $10 trillion industry to research, diagnose and care for those with major illnesses like diabetes or cancer,” Gordon writes in a blue paper around Universal Health Coin’s recent emergence in the medical sector. “Imagine if healthcare providers worldwide had mobile access to collaborate and be assisted by artificial intelligence, so that they have the cumulative knowledge of all their expert colleagues and the latest research and relevance.”
In outreach materials showing the “elevator pitch” on Universal Health Coin, Jones suggests that the use of this digital tool will go beyond easier and more transparent sharing of information to actually alleviate some of the high costs of healthcare today.
Citing $500 billion in administrative waste, Jones suggests that most doctors actually spend more time on paperwork than on face-to-face patient interactions.
For those who want more information on this exciting new development, Jones is scheduled to participate in a blockchain meetup in Augusta, Georgia, October 4 from 6 to 8 PM.
Jones’s technology is having an impact in the field – appearing in various publications that focus on the current burdens within the industry. One of the biggest problems with healthcare today is the revenue cycle; articles like this one at KevinMD go over the need to fine-tune the healthcare revenue cycle, and what so often happens between the provision of medical services and the final bill.
A white paper from UhX shows a modernized, digitized and blockchain enabled “payment flow” replacing the current model where financial responsibility bounced ambiguously between several parties for months.
Clinical workflow experts are interested in how this type of system could alleviate some of the real pain points in medicine.
In covering the Florida Health IT Summit, Healthcare Informatics listened to a presentation by Dr. Ben Schanker and conducted a subsequent interview on the utility of blockchain in healthcare.
“An example initially would be empowering patients to control who accesses their records and for them to see an audit trail of when clinicians access their records,” Schanker told Healthcare Informatics, describing how blockchain processes could work. “That feedback loop of patients being able to see when clinicians access their records could be support the patient-clinician relationship and empower patients.”
In presenting the realities of the medical world, Schanker had mixed comments on blockchain utility, but stressed the importance of handling data correctly.
“Data is overwhelming in healthcare,” Schanker said. “Deloitte published a study that found that it takes a physician 50 minutes per patient to adequately review a single patient medical record. I know as a clinician that I don’t have time for that.”
Shanker and others point to the types of solutions that Jones and other proponents insist UhX can do for providers. Look for these sorts of innovations to move baskets of medical fintech stocks and build a broader comprehensive foundation for blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
