Medical consumers now able to control their own health information with the benefit of IBM LinuxONE performance

Since 2017, MedChain has been giving patients control of their own health information and the ability to delegate access to providers like doctors and hospitals using a blockchain and distributed storage solution for EMR and electronic protected health information (ePHI). The MedChain Network is an extensible, layered architecture and protocol system governed and secured by multiple blockchains that utilizes a multi-crypto-token framework. This network is built upon the Hyperledger Fabric permissioned blockchain, an open source project hosted by the Linux Foundation and built to run on LinuxONE. The MedChain solution is a “common data-layer” that allows existing EMR companies to build compliant healthcare dApps, empowering clients with unprecedented levels of control and insight into their own information.

Cognition Foundry is a service provider that enables visionaries to use extreme computing power for the good of society. As they “democratize access to enterprise IT”, they offer the LinuxONE platform to MedChain developers, creating a blockchain and analytics solution that can quickly scale to support millions of transactions — similar capabilities that have previously only been available to corporations and government agencies.

“Incorporating Cognition Foundry’s IBM LinuxONE environment into the MedChain architecture, allows a fantastic opportunity to exponentially grow Phase II of our network on top of the Phase I work of storing and managing EMR. Phase II is the data-intensive AI and deep learning involved with analyzing all that data. Building on top of the existing MedChain permission structure, only the patient can authorize their data to be used in research. Over the years, this opt-in process will yield petabytes of full lifetimes of contiguous data. The effect of having each patient’s data accessible by all care providers means new discoveries can be made based on the ‘holistic’ view of each and every procedure or medication taken,” said Steve Wishstar, CTO of MedChain.

“As a service provider, IBM LinuxONE allows us to quickly set up a complete IT infrastructure capable of supporting millions of transactions for clients like MedChain,” said Ron Argent, CEO of Cognition Foundry. “LinuxONE supports pervasive encryption of data and workload isolation, enabling advanced protection against external and internal threats for sensitive data and applications’

Working together, Cognition Foundry and MedChain underpinned by IBM LinuxONE will help patients control their data and help researchers discover new treatments and cures for the benefit of everyone.

MedChain and the MedChain Network are trademarks of MedChain Inc.

Cognition Foundry is a trademark of Cognition Foundry, Ltd.

IBM and LinuxONE are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. For a current list of IBM trademarks, please see http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

MedChain and Cognition Foundry Partner to Tackle Important Healthcare Challenges Using Blockchain… was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

MedChain, the leading blockchain Electronic Health Record platform is excited to announce a new partnership with Layer Protocol, the leading portable reputation platform on the blockchain.

This partnership will allow patients and providers who use the Medchain platform to be fully confident in the reputation of their Health Record storage facility. With the high level of security needed for storing sensitive data, the addition of Layer Protocol’s decentralized reputation protocol will provide customers peace of mind while adding transparency to the data storage centers holding their Protected Health Information.

Joachim Sandgaard, CEO of MedChain, said the partnership with Layer Protocol will give our patients and providers additional confidence in our platform. “Given the importance of security surrounding an individual’s healthcare record customer protection is a must, and we are excited to be partnering with Layer Protocol to keep storage providers accountable.”

Commenting on the partnership with MedChain, Derrick Ko, co-founder of Layer Protocol, said: “Secure, portable reputation is essential to a decentralized future, and our partnership with MedChain is the perfect example of this need across industries. We are excited to partner with Joachim, and give them the ability to add transparency to an otherwise hidden part of the Healthcare space — data sharing and integrity.”

MedChain’s mission is to use blockchain technology to establish a better, more secure and transparent framework for Electronic Medical Records (EMR) that vastly improves the quality of care for patients while reducing healthcare providers’ costs. This allows companies and individuals to build software and applications within a globally compliant framework facilitating secure storage and transparency. Learn more about the project at www.medchain.global.

Layer Protocol is a secure reputation data exchange that provides portable reputation to systems around the world, creating a next-generation, decentralized global authority of user behavior reputation. For more information visit www.layerprotocol.com

MedChain and Layer Protocol Partner to keep Data Storage Centers honest and transparent. was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

MedChain, the leading blockchain electronic health record platform is excited to announce a new partnership with the leading blockchain security protocol, Trustroot (www.trustroot.io).

This partnership will allow individuals who use the the Medchain’s platform to be fully confident in the validity of their transaction. With the high rate of fraudulent activity happening within the blockchain community, the addition of Trustroot’s verification will provide customers peace of mind while protecting them from phishing attacks, malware, and other advanced cyber threats.

Joachim Sandgaard, CEO of MedChain, said the partnership with Trustroot will give our customers increased confidence in our platform. “Given the importance of an individuals’s healthcare record, customer protection is a must, and we are excited to be partnering with Trustroot to keep our customers safe.”

Commenting on the partnership with MedChain, Shayan Zadeh, CEO of Trustroot, said: “Medchain is a great project that democratizes healthcare records for all patients. We are excited to see our technology providing more users increased safety and security for such a vital technology”

MedChain’s mission is to use blockchain technology to establish a better, more secure and transparent framework for Electronic Medical Records (EMR) that vastly improves the quality of care for patients while reducing healthcare providers’ costs. This allows companies and individuals to build software and applications within a globally compliant framework facilitating secure storage and transparency. Learn more about the project at www.medchain.global.

Trustroot is a blockchain protocol that protects individuals and businesses from fraud and theft within the cryptocurrency community. The protocol verifies the identity and trustworthiness of the blockchain business users interact with to help them avoid scams, phishing attacks, and other fraudulent activity. Learn more about the project at www.trustroot.io.

MedChain and Trustroot Partner to Secure Electronic Health Record Transactions on the Blockchain was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When it comes to implementing security and interoperability in the healthcare field, the United States is an unfortunate embarrassment. It is costing not just billions of dollars but lives as people scramble to transfer data swiftly, maintain it securely, and not mess up anyone’s records. Healthcare systems are so far behind other industries, with so many different electronic medical records (EMRs) systems competing to store and manage people’s files, that no one knows where to begin to tie it all together. That is, no one knew until MedChain came along.

INTEROPERABILITY

From the smallest private practices to the largest hospitals, MedChain is using cutting-edge blockchain protocol technology to make sure every location can ‘talk’ to each other in seconds. There is no need to change what EMR you are using. MedChain is being developed to encompass all of them. What this means is that there is no more waiting for other clinics or hospitals to fax you over a patient’s records. Moreover, with the technology literally at your fingertips, taking care of your patient has never been easier.

What MedChain is doing is this: decentralizing the physical storage but not the control… All the records are on a distributed storage network (DSN). Computers in the MedChain network that store EMR already makeup this DSN, and will be integrated into our systems. These computers dedicate a given amount of storage for a certain amount of time, allowing for them to accept invitations to store more information while being compensated for their time. EMR warehouses, hospitals, and clinics are already storing this data andMedChain will be offering a way for them to get paid to do it. Incentivizing in this way will more than likely bring new players into the field and help to grow your capacity.

It all comes down to putting the patient in control, that’s the one factor that we have missed for so long. In an interview with EHR Intelligence, Shaun Grannis MD, Director of Regenstrief Institute’s Center for Biomedical Informatics said, “Matching the correct individual to his or her health data is critical to their medical care. Statistics show that up to one in five patient records are not accurately matched even within the same health care system. As many as half of patient records are mismatched when data is transferred between health care systems.”

With MedChain, data is never actually moved between systems; It follows the patient clinic-to-clinic, doctor-to-doctor, and provider-to-provider. As long as you’re within the MedChain network, you can access those records if permitted by the patient. MedChain is providing the link to connect all the data in the field right now.

HIPAA and GDPR COMPLIANCE

Records are already encrypted and stored; MedChain is just developing new ways to ensure their safekeeping. Once electronic Protected Health Information is encrypted, MedChain software will hash it, and create defined references on the blockchain to ensure data integrity. The software will function as nodes which are authorized and federated by MedChain, so there is zero on-site upkeep.

Currently, MedChain is the only company to conduct an SEC regulated offering to present a HIPAA-compliant and GDPR-compliant answer to the problems we are facing with Electronic Medical Records and electronic Protected Health Information systems. The team is working diligently to make sure they are staying compliant globally. In fact, with the military-grade encryption, blockchain protocol technology, and distributed storage, all combined with their open-source framework, MedChain is going to set a new standard regarding medical regulation compliance.

This compliance is all accomplished through the use of adaptable smart contracts, hashed records of encrypted ePHI, and a patient’s private key. With Federated Servers in play, any new regulations or guidelines that come into effect are easily changed and adapted into the software or any new dApps built on the platform.

Does all this sound too good to be true? Yeah, I get it. Our healthcare systems have been ancient, backlogged, and unsecure for so long, that anything new in the healthcare field sounds like a dream. That is why MedChain is making moves in this field. Time to make it a reality.

Healthcare Providers Can Count on the MedChain Solution was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

While our marketing team travels the world together, our developers are at home making sure our product is on track and coming along.

Working with Hyperledger v1.05, organizations and channels were added to our blockchain as a representation of what different entities can do within our network. Just as we have worked so rigorously to add these, Hyperledger v1.1 was released, and with it some serious upgrades. These upgrades allow for more flexibility overall when creating permissions and security on our blockchain. Highlights for this updates include that it allows for chaincode written in node, but we are using Go exclusively. The Mutual Transport Layer Security (TLS) between Fabric nodes, and between clients and nodes, is in this new version. Also, the ability to generate revocation lists (CRLs) has been added and to dynamically update client identities and affiliations. Both of these allow for a more streamlined process when assigning permissions and tracking entities in our network.

Our team is working very hard on transitioning over to the new version, and we are excited to see how these changes shape MedChain.
As far as getting our code out to the public, we will make sure to announce our public GitHub as soon as we have it up. Also, our CTO Steve is working on a solution that allows the public to view our prototype as it is created!

Dev Update 4 was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And with that, our blockchain development team is hard at work.

To be a member of the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network a machine needs to have the correct cryptographic artifacts. These artifacts are generated using Cryptogen, a tool from the Hyperledger SDK. This binary file creates cryptographic artifacts, including private and public keys. Part of setting up our network requires us to move our cryptographic artifacts onto docker images defining the network nodes. Doing it in this way works just fine in a development environment, but once we go into a production environment, this solution is not scalable or secure.

Steve and Russ have been setting up a Fabric Certificate Authority that will automate the cryptographic artifact production and maintain the whitelist of nodes. The security of this is at it’s highest because we are never moving cryptographic artifacts across the internet. Instead, providers will get a docker image that produces these artifacts themselves.

That’s what we got for this week, folks. As we make updates, we will, of course, keep you updated.

Dev Update #3 was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Now, whitepapers can be much more than a government policy or their philosophy on an issue, and recently whitepapers have been seen as the golden child of a startup or company. People get hyped up about some grand idea that sounds good on paper (forgive the pun), but doesn’t hold it’s worth in the ring.

Here’s the thing. Just because you have a whitepaper, might not mean you have a good product or solution.

So what does it take to write a good white paper?

Well, there’s no clear definition or set of rules to writing one. Each company will be different, and each idea or policy will have to be expressed to showcase their innovation. Some white papers are only 6 pages long, while others are over 100 pages with technical jargon that only a select few can understand. With no real standards in place, there is only one correct way to write these things.

That is, a team has to hold themselves to the highest standard possible.

We can’t accept whitepapers that are thrown together last minute. No more papers that are copy pasted and doctored to look professional without any content. Investors want to see that there is a white paper and that it ‘looks’ good, but that’s not enough… For those that really get into a whitepaper, and can read between the lines, they need to see something real and tangible. Something that makes sense logically and that is practical.

Someone who reads a white paper should walk away learning something new and feeling good that there is a team making moves to create something or solve an issue. They need to feel that the people behind the white paper know what they are doing.

If no standards are set, then you set the standard.

Here. See for yourself. Download MedChain Whitepaper

Beyond the Whitepaper was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And without further ado, our actual update.

Steve and Russ worked on the pattern of encryption to ensure security across all data exchanges in the network. This is to make sure patients always have control, and that they can govern permissions to providers. This is implemented using a patient master GPG key which will then have sub keys generated for each selected care provider.

This is what MedChain has been talking about these past few months. Making sure patients are in control, and that their records are secure. So don’t worry, we have our developers working very hard to ensure this.

Russ has restructured the prototype blockchain for the Secure Medical Record Chain to better reflect architectural conversations had in the office this week. Steve is currently going all in on finishing our whitepaper and we anticipate the release of it this coming Monday, June 4th!

If you want to be a part of helping to grow MedChain, then please hop on over to https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4397564.0 for our Utility Token Bounty! Use these tokens to help stress test our network in the future and be compensated for your time.

Dev Update #2 was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So why are 90% of hospitals and clinics losing patient data? And when they are not losing it, one in five records are not accurately matched; even within the same health care systems. This is a huge problem… not only for patients, but for bigger entities as well. No hospital wants to be known for losing and/or mismatching data and none of us want that happening to our records. We just want to know that they are safe and sound, and that we can see them when we need to. Is that too much to ask?

Speaking of which, patients don’t need a reason to request their medical records. I know I want access to my records to help me make healthier decisions in my life, you may have a different reason or none at all. Every day we don’t have access to our records begs the question “Who actually owns this medical information?” because it sure doesn’t seem like it’s you or me.

How can we control our health if we don’t have access to our health records?

What it comes down to is interoperability or in plain English; sharing between systems. Entities in the healthcare field need to start talking ‘data’ to each other. Are there too many Electronic Medical Records systems(EMRs) in the game right now? 26 in Boston alone says John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. And getting these systems to talk to each other is a nightmare. What we need is for these businesses to come together and bring the patient back into focus, not just numbers and data, but real people… how do they do this?

Utilizing blockchain technology, that’s how.

Make sure to check out our telegram and website for updates on just how MedChain is using blockchain technology to solve real world healthcare issues!

They’re my medical records, and I want them now! was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s 2018. Trying to get access to and make sense of your health records should be as easy as tapping a button on your phone… That’s exactly what can be accomplished with MedChain.

Easy to Use

Imagine walking into any doctor’s office, in any city, in any state, and being able to access your records. You check in, go into a private room, and the doctor meets you personally. You authenticate your Doctor’s request, granting access to your records. Voila! The process couldn’t be more streamlined; patients won’t have to worry about medical technical terms, HIPAA or GDPR, messing up their data, or ever losing it.

Agency

A patient has complete decision-making power over who gets to see that data. And they can revoke those privileges at any time. Log into your phone or web app and strike the hospital, physician, or entity from having access. This works both ways. Let’s say a patient has an emergency and goes to the ER. They can pull out their phone and grant the hospital access within seconds. The power is in the patient’s hands with MedChain.

This also means that when you goes to see your orthopedic doctor, you don’t have to share any information you don’t want or need to. Your dermatologist probably doesn’t need to know that you broke your arm in the 3rd grade, and you might not want your insurance company to have your entire genome. These things may seem obvious, but with our current system, just getting access to any medical records is a challenge, and then when a doctor or clinic does get them, they are often delayed or incomplete.

Finally, in terms of agency, you will now have access to your own medical records at anytime. You can pull your phone out on the subway to work, and check your records at any given moment. You could get updates when doctors, health insurances companies, or hospitals request to access your information and when information is added or removed.

Sound Too Good to be True?

The MedChain distributed storage network provides a platform to make this scenario a reality. Developers, institutions, researchers, will all be able to leverage our framework to facilitate a world-wide healthcare interoperability solution.

Patient Governed Healthcare Access was originally published in Iceforce on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.