Blockchain has been transforming industry after industry. However, a large motivation of millennial entrepreneurial ambition, the heart and soul of the crypto revolution, is changing the world for the better. Business ideas that simply enrich are shunned as old-fashioned remnants of the “greed is good” mentality of the men who brought the world’s economy down in 2008.
Ideas like Uber, Facebook, or AirBnB are not only meant to be profit-seeking ventures, but supposed to liberate, enlighten, and make the world a better place. “Don’t Be Evil,” no matter its veracity as Google’s slogan, continues to be the ethos of many millennial entrepreneurs.
So how does Blockchain factor into this? While Blockchain technology has been revolutionizing industry after industry, the focus has mostly been financial services. While many cryptos have high-minded white papers or marketing, many are simply financial instruments, or even worse, scams. However, this developing tech undeniably has the potential to make the world faster, safer, and better.
And some are starting to take notice.
One group of blockchain entrepreneurs at the Iris Network have their eyes set on improving and democratizing the healthcare industry. Aiming to revolutionize the way providers and patients deal with health data by attempting to bring the miracle of blockchain technology to healthcare shows that even among the gold-rush of cryptomania, some are truly trying to make the world a better place through crypto.
The Problem
The American healthcare industry can be wasteful. This year the US will spend nearly 17% of its GDP on healthcare related expenses, a number only only estimated to rise to 20% by 2025. The cost of healthcare is not only a drain on industry, but it drives up the price of care, making the best care in the world less and less affordable for the majority of American citizens.
This disproportionate expense is the result of inefficiencies not only in how Americans pay and provide healthcare, but in the infrastructure of the system itself. Here is how the Iris Network hopes to make healthcare cheaper and easier for every American.
Electronic Health Records
The current technology of Existing Health Records (EHR’s), the system for storing and sharing medical data is fragmented, insecure, and inefficient. The most costly aspect to providers, and therefore consumers, is the lack of interoperability between systems. When switching healthcare systems, patients can have difficulty transferring their health histories.
The inability to access up-to-date records, and more importantly the time and resources needs to locate them, prevent the doctor form providing optimal care. Healthcare workers, untrained in data entry, are forced to spend vital time inputting imperfect data across systems. The ability to instantly access the full, chronological medical histories in a secure network would revolutionize the healthcare industry.
Could the solution be the Iris Network?
A system of Iris EHRs, based on the Ethereum network, would make healthcare data secure, centralized, accountable, and accessible to those who need it most. By allowing providers, patients, and researchers to upload data to its blockchain network, it gives each participant a time-stamped, secure, and universally accessible store of data. Patients and their healthcare providers would be able to access entire medical histories.
More importantly, a universal and distributed block of data would allow for massive improvements in the healthcare industry that would make healthcare CEO’s and the 99% wealthier and healthier. Researchers, once limited to surveys and limited data due to confidentiality laws, could now have access to millions of completely anonymous, aggregated health profiles. This could accelerate medical innovation, making companies richer, but also pushing medicine forward for everybody.
Purchasable, secure, confidential data would allow insurance providers greater insight into the market than ever. Rates and premiums recalculated hourly could bring down the cost of that bane of modern living: health insurance. Iris EHR’s, using blockchain technology, could truly make the world a better, healthier place.
The Iris Ecosystem
The revolutionary aspect of Iris is to take crypto, the tech that has been used to threaten banks and Federal Reserves with the power of decentralization, and use it to symbiotically improve the healthcare industry.
The “miners” of Iris Coin would be those who upload data to the network- patients and authorized healthcare professionals. In return, they would be given an Iris token, similar to any other digital currency. Miners could then sell these Iris Tokens on exchanges.
The price would be determined by those who wish to access the goldmine that is aggregated, anonymous healthcare date. Insurance providers, pharmaceutical companies, and even Big Data firms would create a healthy market for Iris Tokens, creating a feedback loop of even more accurate and helpful health data. But instead of pure profit, the miners would be driving down the price of healthcare for everybody, accelerating research, and making crypto an integral part of the 21st century.
A world in which medical records are as secure, fast, and universal as Bitcoin could allow doctors at universities in Europe, Asia, and North America accessing a single patient’s medical record being as simple as sending an Ethereum through the Lightning network.
This Iris Ecosystem gives miners access to the most efficient and safe version of healthcare records imaginable. By reducing providers’ overhead from archaic forms of data storage, billions could be saved on health insurance. Widespread adoption of Iris could see miners, buyers, and patients saving an untold amount of lives.
Iris: The Future of Blockchain?
For many, crypto continues to represent the unknown and the threatening. While in the past few months regulatory agencies and governments have attempted to rein in blockchain technologies, blockchain entrepreneurs continue to innovate for the betterment of mankind.
Iris could be a proof-of-use of a new species of blockchain, one that hopes to symbiotically grow with the world, rather than disrupt. While some will scoff, tech like Iris could fundamentally alter the way the establishment (and regulators) view blockchain. And more importantly, could make the unstoppable tidal wave of blockchain into a force for good.
