Most people immediately associate blockchain technology with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Justifiably so, as that is how the blockchain was first introduced. However, since its inception, blockchain has made its way into a number of industries. At the recent North American Bitcoin Conference, I was pleased to discover that blockchain technology was being applied to improve our broken healthcare system on an administrative level.
What caught my attention during the conference was not only the utilization of blockchain technology in healthcare application development but also the actual people behind the technology, in particular, Pradeep Goel, CEO of Solve.Care. During his ICO opening remarks, Goel explained, “I got into blockchain because I had a problem that I have been trying to solve for twenty years, and it seemed like a perfect match. It was more about searching for a solution and then stumbling on blockchain and realizing what it can do.”
However, before diving into the technology, Goel first explained why the issue of healthcare was so close to his heart: “I work for a three-year-old, that’s my son, and I bring him up because … he was diagnosed a year ago with a significant disability and that changed our lives. All my wife does now is coordinate his care. It’s all manual and it is ridiculously complicated.”
It was Pradeep’s personal plight to make changes in the healthcare system that sparked my interest, leading me to learn more about some of the proposed solutions that Solve.Care was offering to the market.
According to Pradeep, “Solve.Care is building a healthcare platform on blockchain to streamline payments and administration for patients, physicians, insurers, and employers. We are focused on eliminating processes and administrative steps that frustrate the patient, burden the providers, impede care, and ultimately increase costs for everyone. Our goal is to redefine the interaction between patient, physician, and insurer. We have a highly innovative payment coin and a platform token that work in tandem to deliver incredible value for all stakeholders via our ‘Care.Wallets.’ We measure our success in terms of administrative cost, savings, and improvement in access to and quality of care.”
Though it is too early to project if Solve.Care will revolutionize administration of healthcare and other benefit programs globally, this is a clear growing trend within the healthcare industry. A 2017 IBM study titled “Healthcare Rallies for Blockchain” found that 16 percent of surveyed healthcare executives had concrete plans to implement blockchain solutions immediately, while 56 percent expected to implement their plans by 2020. Not only can blockchain disrupt and revolutionize the payment system within healthcare, but it would also have the ability to create widely accessible medical databases, strengthen security and privacy, and streamline administrative practices.
However, Pradeep’s personal connection to the issue at hand may eventually lead to successful implementation. Personally, I found Pradeep’s mission truly inspiring and well thought out. His credentials and, more importantly, his passion and personal drive to succeed, make Pradeep a notable innovator who has created a credible healthcare application using blockchain technology — a technology that hasn’t yet reached its full potential in this industry.
By Laura Vovan, M.D.
