Patient First – Healthcare driven by technology

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Health Hub Project New Zealand and BlockBit Solutions are pleased to announce their partnership to drive healthcare innovation and development for the future using emerging technologies.

At a point when New Zealand and Australian healthcare systems are in crisis, Health Hub Project New Zealand (HHPNZ) and Australia and New Zealand-based technology company BlockBit Solutions have formed a partnership.

Together they will drive healthcare in new directions for the future locally, nationally and internationally, using a technology platform built on distributed ledger technology (Blockchain) combined with data science, the internet of things and digital identity.

General practitioner and past co-director of the Central District Hospital Emergency Department, Dr David Hill, and organisation development researcher, Dr Pat Nolan, both co-founders of HHPNZ, have described the design and approach that HHPNZ is taking as innovative and leading edge.

Nolan said, “Our position is that health is a basic right for every human, and HHPNZ’s mission day to day is to make that right a reality and our top priority for action. Over the past few years we have invested significant time and effort into healthcare research and development to understand what the health industry and our patients need and demand."

Two key design features of the joint HHPNZ-BlockBit Solutions strategy and approach are that it is innovative future-focussed and patient-centred.

BlockBit Solutions CEO Reeanjou Ram said that the new and innovative healthcare platform that HHPNZ will use and is trialling right now “will give HHPNZ medical and healthcare practitioners the ability to streamline processes and offer personalised care with greater efficiency and significantly improve health outcomes.

“The BlockBit collaboration with HHPNZ already is proving highly productive and over time will transform the quality of patients’ experience and their wellness and health.

“Hospital visits create sizable medical data regarding various diagnoses, treatment, prescriptions. Under current medical data systems, the patient cannot collect his/her own medical record easily. Patients, institutions and medical practitioners are all paying unnecessary costs for medical data management.”

Medical practitioners have trouble providing the appropriate level of treatment because the current patient data is held with various providers, with practitioners not having a single historical view of the patient’s medical record. Medical researchers have limited access to medical record data due to data protection regulations.

People may think changing the paradigm of patient healthcare record is too ambitious; however, HHPNZ will become the disruptor and game changer in the healthcare industry. We believe HHPNZ is on the right path and will contribute to making a win-win strategy for patients, medical practitioners and other providers in healthcare care service industry.

When fully in place, the HHPNZ platform will create a positive, seamless patient experience across every touch point of healthcare. For instance, patients will have access to mobile consultations from anywhere in real time, be able to make electronic updates to their medical history and have control over their medical record, eliminating the need for medical staff to manually enter updates from a paper form and update patient information sooner, and thereby help providers deliver more personalised and relevant care without delay.

David Hill (HHPNZ Director & Co-Founder) and senior doctor is passionate that “patients have the right to access and have ownership of their own medical records and institutions no longer be at the centre of medical data handling.

“Importantly, the HHPNZ platform is a wholistic approach; it will help eliminate the need for patients, institutions, and medical practitioners all paying unnecessary costs for fragmented medical data management, as at present, and it will do this with a single unified historical view of each patient’s medical record held in a secure, confidential ledger and in accord with medical record data protection regulations. It’s about using emerging technologies to improve access and health equity.”

Source: Health Hub Project New Zealand and BlockBit Solutions media release, 3 September 2018

Sector updates are provided by organisations to eHealthNews.nz and have not necessarily been edited or checked for accuracy. Any queries should be directed to the organisation issuing the release. 

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