Creating a Patient-Centered, Global, Decentralized Health System: Combining New Payment and Care Delivery Models with Telemedicine, AI, and Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Over the past decade, there have been many innovations in new payment and care delivery models and technology, from telemedicine to artificial intelligence (AI) to blockchain. These innovations, however, must be used in tandem to drive real change. We review each of these innovations and propose a model for how they can be combined to be greater than the sum of their parts. In doing so, we can create a global, decentralized health system that truly puts patient care at the center, while supporting and further enabling the clinicians who make this care possible, to deliver higher quality care at a fraction of the cost.

The role of blockchain technology in telehealth and telemedicine

“…An Ethereum-based telemedicine solution presented in [31] has preserved the integrity of EHR by storing IPFS hashes of EHR in the decentralized network. Another system proposed in [32] has combined artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology for securing and monetizing the patient's health data. The multi-access Edge computing (MEC) and blockchain-based system presented in [33] has employed various smart contracts to swiftly and securely transfer the cryptocurrency to the wallet of patients as an incentive for sharing their health data.…”

Blockchain Technology Projects to Provide Telemedical Services: Systematic Review

“…Despite their power, tools based on blockchain are easy to use and do not require high financial costs. The only remaining problems are data interoperability and access restrictions due to imperfect regulatory policies, lack of technical regulation in the field of medical data exchange, and deeply rooted paper-based work traditions in many countries [14][15][16][17]. At present, it is possible to represent any information, including numerical data, texts, audios, and images, in a digital format suitable for storage and processing on a personal computer; moreover, the necessary infrastructure for rapid distribution of information is available.…”