The MedicalChain ICO has completed hours after it was launched on February 1. A record 45,000 applications were received within the first two minutes of the ICO sale prompting the platform to shut down new requests to participate.
Users had to wait hours for their KYC credentials to be verified after which they could buy the MedicalChain tokens using their ether. In an unusual move, the company decided to conduct the KYC verification after the launch.
Buyers has to wait long hours before they could know the status of their application prompting a huge backlash on social media.
“We would like to stress that the method we have chosen has caused the least amount of gas wasted,” the company said in a statement in an apparent rebuttal.
Ultimately, only 1773 applications out of the 135,000 submitted were processed before the hard cap of $24M was reached.
Blockchain Comes to the Rescue of Healthcare
MedicalChain seeks to store health records using the blockchain technology. The aim is to ensure that personal health information is stored in a safe and secure way while also giving a higher degree of confidence as to their integrity.
Under the arrangement, health providers and institutions such as pharmacists, doctors, hospitals and laboratories will request permission from patients to access their records. After treatment or diagnosis, they can add their input to the distributed ledger.
Driving Down Costs
The records can also be accessed by service providers such as insurers removing the need to make repetitive entries. Blockchain technology also reduces the chance for data falsification. This bodes well for the insurance industry which has been bedevilled by fraud. If successful, such applications could significantly drive insurance costs down.
The network is built using the HyperLedger Fabric which was developed in collaboration with the likes of IBM. The company is partnering with Civic to help bring medical practitioners on board. The application which is integrated into Medicalchain will not only help enlist practitioners but also verify their licenses to operate.
Fragmented System
“Medicalchain provides solutions to today’s health record problems. The platform is built to securely store and share electronic health records. By digitizing health records and empowering users we can leverage countless industry synergies,” the company says on its website.
“The current healthcare data landscape is fragmented and ill-suited to the instantaneous needs of modern users. As a result of this, stakeholders are incentivized to keep their own records, and no singular version of the truth exists,” the start up says in its whitepaper.
Legacy systems used in the health services are often fragmented and siloed due to the varied standards. Patients are therefore often denied wholesome interventions that could save their lives.
One compelling use case scenario is with unconscious or patients whose memory might be impaired. With implanted chips, it will be possible to access their health history and conduct the necessary interventions.
Cybercrime has become a serious concern as transactions increasingly happen online. The WannaCry attacks of 2017 which grounded many services at the NHS underlines the scale of the problem.
Patient records of 26 million people were compromised in the attack putting highly sensitive patient data in the hands of criminals.
The blockchain technology offers a solution to this problem with its decentralised system in which exact copies of encrypted data are held in millions of computers across the world. The decentralised verification makes it impossible to falsify data once entered into the system.