New healthcare startup ScalaMed is using blockchain tech to make dealing with prescriptions significantly easier for patients, doctors, and pharmacists.
Founded by former pharmaceutical rep, Dr. Tal Rapke, ScalaMed is an app backed by blockchain that allows users to safely access medical information digitally.
“This fusion of blockchain technology and healthcare is a huge leap forward—it is the spine to an eventual blockchain-enabled consumer-centered health record and represents a big step towards personalized healthcare and medicine,” says Rapke.
Patients can track ongoing medication and upcoming prescriptions, and refill directly from the app. Interaction and allergy warnings are available at every level, as well as cost comparison for filling prescriptions.
Pharmacists are able to service patients remotely, cut down on fraudulent prescriptions, and use the app to communicate directly with the prescriber for any questions.
Healthcare professionals can provide on-the-go support using a secure digital database that can be integrated into existing prescription software. Through the app, doctors can access patients’ complete medication list across providers and update as needed.
The process is faster, more transparent, and overall simplified. It’s how healthcare apps should have worked all along.
The average person sees about 16 different doctors, which makes reconciling medications a monumental task. Adverse reactions to medication interaction and errors in prescriptions resulting in negative side effects account for around 10 percent of hospital admissions.
Nearly half of all patients do not take medication as prescribed, which costs the healthcare industry billions of dollars. Providing information to the patients first increases education and knowledge of prescriptions, reducing hospitalizations due to medication errors, non-adherence, and fraud.
With ScalaMed, clinicians can save time and protect client’s data from ever increasing breaches. The app uses cryptographic design, which provides patients with relevant data without using centralized databases.
Since blockchain’s whole deal is decentralization, it removes the middleman in transactions. According to ScalaMed, “patients become the central point for prescriptions.”
Instead of clinicians sending prescriptions to a pharmacy, patients manage their prescriptions directly on the app. The patient chooses to share information with a pharmacist, who can then download, decrypt, and mark as redeemed in the blockchain record.
For those of you thinking, “I would never trust an app with my medical information,” fret not. The app complies with global data security requirements, ISO standards, and is HIPAA compliant.
Select clinics took part in a pilot run during December 2017, and global scaling and expansion are set for some time in 2018. Patients, healthcare professionals, and clinicians can sign up to be notified when the app is ready for release.
Lindsay is an editor for The American Genius with a Communication Studies degree and English minor from Southwestern University. Lindsay is interested in social interactions across and through various media, particularly television, and will gladly hyper-analyze cartoons and comics with anyone, cats included.
