The COVID-19 pandemic should become a learning experience for the world about the real value of healthcare data. It needs to be consolidated on a single database, shared to the rest of the world and owned by individuals. Because healthcare data currently exists in silos that are controlled by various institutions, information about the coronavirus was not disseminated as quickly as possible. If so, maybe it would not have spread as it did, millions would not have lost their precious lives and a more effective vaccine may have been developed sooner.
This is the true importance of a global healthcare database learned the hard way. Even before the pandemic, EHR Data, with its goal of advocating patient safety, was already developing a global healthcare database aimed at controlling opioid addiction. And with the coronavirus outbreak highlighting this need, all the more that it is pushing through with a global healthcare database that allows seamless data sharing and data ownership.
“Being a single source of truth and all of the patients’ data being in one place, what we’re going to be able to offer is that this will be a global solution. That’s why we call it GPR, global patient record. And when we integrate with a provider that’s providing healthcare data, whether that’s a pharmacy, a doctor, a prescriber, a lab, a radiologist or whatever, we go through an authentication process that’s very similar to a KYC process. So, all of the providers are authenticated. And when they submit data to us, we actually attach their provider ID to that data,” EHR Data Chief Scientist Ron Austring said during a panel discussion at Sir Anthony Ritossa’s 13th Global Family Office Investment Summit in Dubai, where Bitcoin Association, a Switzerland-based organization pushing for blockchain development, was featured.
Integrity of data is crucial to healthcare on blockchain as all stakeholders in the healthcare industry will be able to access it and information will be updated in real time. That is why GPR was built on the Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain, the only one that has the ability to accommodate big data and microtransactions at a very low cost, with the current average fee per transaction at 0.0067 USD. This is because the BSV blockchain continues to scale massively, as evidenced by its most recent record-breaking 9,000 transactions per second.
“All healthcare data is written to the Bitcoin SV blockchain, which will function as an immutable, auditable, and trusted database. As a trusted database, the Bitcoin SV blockchain will also act as a data-bus to move data originating in one EHR Data data-center to all other EHR Data data-centers operating throughout the world,” Austring explained in an interview.
But GPR is not just about the greater good, it also advocates data ownership, which means they are giving back ownership of healthcare data to patients. With GPR, individuals will have their medical history in their hands. Patients will not need to think twice about changing hospitals or clinics as they have easy access to their medical records. Furthermore, they earn revenues whenever they grant permission for institutions to use their data for various purposes, such as scientific research and development.
“For years, our society has been harvested for personal data that is bought and sold to large companies for corporate gain. We want to put an end to the status quo of non-consensual data sharing and monetization. Our point of difference is simple: The patient is our primary focus and at the heart of what we do. We are driven by health outcomes. Furthermore, we believe that patients own their health and personal data, not corporations,” EHR Data stated on its website.
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