Science and healthcare has come far, but the digital infrastructure behind it has not evolved to keep up the pace with scientific breakthroughs and new methodologies. dHealth is here to lay the foundation of a new type of infrastructure that will supercharge both scientists’ research efforts and the service of healthcare providers.
This will be achieved by utilizing a fusion of two different blockchain technologies—NEM’s Symbol and Cardano’s Marlowe. This fusion is realized in the form of a standalone dHealth blockchain network that will be connected to the Cardano blockchain. Before we examine how this will be achieved and what is the end result for dHealth technology users—let us first dive deeper into how the blockchain technology can be utilized to assist researchers and healthcare providers.
Facilitating a new era in healthcare with the help of Blockchain technology
Access to health-related data is vital for the development of new cures and treatments and patients’ safety. Fast access to health data also results in a faster deployment of cures and treatments. This has become apparent even to those not directly involved in healthcare—with the occurrence of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Unfortunately, at the current moment, most health data passes through multiple vendors before it becomes available for research, therefore, increasing the costs, development time, and risk of tampering with the data.
In other words, the current norm is—health data is difficult to get and is usually outdated when available. This creates inefficiencies within the healthcare system and ultimately results in unnecessary human suffering and in the loss of human lives that otherwise would not be lost.
There are many other issues that plague the healthcare system which is easily resolved by utilizing blockchain technology. Some of these issues are lack of transparency, data monopolization, fragmentation of data leading to siloes, and inefficiencies in accessing data by all healthcare stakeholders.
This will soon become a distant memory for researchers and healthcare providers—as blockchain technology easily surpasses all these obstacles with its decentralized trustless database, smart contracts and fraud-proof digital identity.
Not only does blockchain technology easily surpass these issues due to its characteristics, but it also enables entirely new capabilities that were previously not even considered.
Blockchain technology will enable patients to have full control over their health data, and they will also be able to monetize this data for the benefit of themselves and all healthcare stakeholders. This way patients will not only be able to get a monetary benefit for their data provision but will also directly participate in the creation of new treatments and cures—essentially saving lives.
Another key factor that blockchain technology introduces and enables is the ability to provide a super-efficient infrastructure for the settlement of healthcare-related transactions—in countries where there is no such infrastructure!
In countries that have such infrastructure, which relies on non-blockchain technology, much can be improved. Smart contracts based on the Marlowe smart contract language will enable complex multi-party scenarios that involve different stakeholders. A fair comparison between Marlowe’s capabilities and the capabilities of current digital healthcare infrastructure would be to compare the digital calculator to an abacus.
The edge of dHealth’s revolutionary blockchain technology
There are existing blockchain technologies that are utilized in healthcare, however, similarly to the old digital infrastructure, these technologies are having issues that seem insurmountable for them to resolve.
Among the myriad of issues that seemingly cannot be resolved by other technologies—the most prominent ones are certainly serious performance problems, lack of native currencies for transactions and limited transparency and trust.
To overcome these obstacles, the dHealth team looked at all the available blockchain technologies and investigated possible fusions, or combinations, that will not only alleviate these issues but also excel in those areas.
The dHealth team found the ultimate solution in the combination of NEM’s new blockchain technology—Symbol, and Cardano’s smart contract language—Marlowe.
Marlowe’s simplicity of the design enables virtually anyone that is minimally knowledgeable to write a fully secure smart contract—in a short period of time. Contracts that are written using Marlowe— are highly efficient, easily written and the most secure smart contracts currently available.
NEM’s Symbol blockchain on the other hand excels in its blockchain capabilities, offering the best solution for businesses that want to deploy their apps onto a blockchain. With Symbol, integrating new applications is a very streamlined and easy process, and it is also very practical—because the blockchain contains four tiers that function independently of each other. This means that, for example, deploying or updating a dApp’s SDK on the blockchain will not interfere with the rest of the dApp.
Symbol’s Proof of Stake Plus-based protocol ensures equitability within the ecosystem of each business—as well as on a collective level of the blockchain.
Ultimately the fusion of these two separate blockchain technologies will be achieved through a Symbol Cardano bi-directional bridge that will enable seamless communication between the two blockchains.
Vision of an equitable healthcare system
dHealth’s distributed and community-owned network for healthcare-related transactions that will power a global data-driven healthcare ecosystem—can achieve what legacy systems are incapable of.
As a community-owned and distributed platform for health-related transactions and data-access, the dHealth Network puts the individual at its center. Its disruptive potential lies in breaking existing data monopolies and the empowerment of a global data-driven healthcare system.
All the while—the healthcare industry has the opportunity to use the dHealth Network as infrastructure for their use cases such as securing supply chain processes or streamlining payment processes. Having access to field-tested infrastructure can jumpstart innovation without dragging critical resources from other aspects of a project.
Join us in our vision of an equitable healthcare system, let’s change the healthcare industry—together.
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