Please describe your proposed solution.
What are the Benefits of a Health Information Exchange?
Many studies have shown the enormous benefits of having a Health Information Exchange (HIE) - from the improvement in the quality of care, better healthcare delivery, increased safety, elimination of duplicate testing, to the reduction of healthcare costs. An HIE allows the exchange of healthcare information electronically from one organization to another among different information systems.
Nice benefits! So, what is the current state of HIEs in countries across the globe?
For many countries, especially the emerging ones, implementing an HIE is still a far cry from reality. This is because of the many significant challenges in building one, such as standardizations, at-scale interoperability, data security, data privacy, data integrity, identity assurance, risk management, and auditability. Even for developed countries that have taken big steps toward this direction, there are still ongoing obstacles in achieving the intended setup.
Why do even advanced countries still have challenges with their HIE?
Previously, the only available technology that allows them for an HIE setup is a centralized one. In this setup, the potential threat for hacking and intrusion is very high. In addition, since there is a central authority, there is usually less trust from users with regard to the handling of their privacy.
Fortunately, with the developments in blockchain and zero-knowledge proof crypto protocols, a decentralized, permissionless, and secure health exchange is now possible.
Ok, so with blockchain and zero-knowledge, building an HIE should be fairly easy, right?
Not so. Take note that the exchange platform is just one part of the required infrastructure. The users would also need their own health systems to integrate with the HIE. As such, to complete this goal, a set of healthcare applications and health APIs are necessary to finally resolve this concern.
Is that what Hippocrades offers?
Yes. Hippocrades offers the complete setup of health modules and APIs that will be integrated with the proposed HIE. In fact, it has already built a Proof of Concept (POC) for its HIE. However, the team further improved the framework by adding a Medical Records Rights Management and an enhanced protocol called Hippr (short for Hippocrades Protocol). A separate white paper is written about it.
Really, where can I see the Hippr white paper?
The Hippr white paper can be seen here. You can also read the Hippocrades Infrastructure white paper here.
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
Would the Decentralized Health Information Exchange bring impactful use case to Cardano ecosystem and help drive more adoption?
Definitely yes! First, Hippocrades provides healthcare solutions for clinics, pharmacies, diagnostic centers, and doctors. These alone would already drive users of the health modules. Second, these systems are automatically integrated with the intended health exchange platform. Other facilities that have their own systems can still integrate via the provided APIs. Once they are integrated, the potential number of transactions/exchanges (built on top of Cardano) can be enormous driving huge adoption and traction.
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
<u>Health Core is Already Built</u>
The core of this healthcare platform is DONE, something we have been working on since 2016. Thus, the foundation is already set up, we just need to build the Medical Records Rights Protocol on top of this. See existing Healthcare APIs of Hippocrades already built.
In addition, a POC of the HIE has already been built in testnet. However, it was noted that it needs improvements as brought about by the Hippr white paper, thus this proposal. As such, the team has already experience in building this.
<u>Potential Risk</u>
In terms of capabilities, our team has shown that we can deliver. The potential challenge could be the setting of the deliverables timeline. There are some external factors that may be overlooked during planning (in a previous project, couple of our team members got Covid, for example).
To mitigate this, we will propose a more conservative timeline of activities in this proposal in consideration of potential factors that can cause delay.