Across the healthcare continuum, technological advances, and collaborations continue to unlock game-changing possibilities. In particular, the evolving digital healthcare landscape has made possible the transition to more personalized and patient-centric care. And while at the same time, ensuring that care is more omnipresent, less episodic, and fully integrated with the lifestyle of the population.
Also, digital health systems are making possible a quantum shift, one that creates immense opportunities to enhance patient experiences and optimize care, ensuring affordability and accessibility for all. Resulting changes--that are being driven by unique tech collaborations and innovations-- affect key aspects of the healthcare spectrum. That’s from inpatient care made possible via remote healthcare systems, to home care enabled through digital health platforms, and to outpatient care that’s made possible via telemedicine.
With the shift towards digital healthcare, trust and transparency have become of utmost importance, necessitating the adoption of blockchain, and its use cases in the healthcare industry. And with the increased adoption of blockchain in healthcare, numerous partnerships and collaborations between blockchain pioneers and healthcare companies have come forth, unlocking numerous potentials. A case in point is the Plugin - Awatarpay partnership.
To have a better view of how blockchain-backed digital health systems can empower today’s healthcare, let’s take the Plugin - Awatarpay partnership as an example.
Plugin - Awatarpay Partnership: Why it Matters
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of tech innovations to improve the quality of care has skyrocketed. Moreso, the adoption of blockchain-based use cases in healthcare has grown tremendously, unleashing the benefits associated with patient-centric electronic health records, transparency in healthcare supply chains, and secure appointment data management systems.
In this light, the Plugin--Awatarpay collaboration seeks to build a robust healthcare platform for the numerous hospitals based in India. The platform will later launch and spread across the globe at a later stage.
Through the partnership, Awatarpay Private Limited---an Indian-based bootstrap start-up that focuses on digital health platforms---and SUVIK Technologies LLC will leverage their industry-leading capabilities to build MedAwatar. Through the guidance of the Senior Blockchain Manager and Principal Blockchain Solution Architect at SUVIK Group --Logeswaran Audhikesavan--, team Plugin will help develop a robust digital health platform that uses accurate, secure, and verifiable real-world data. This will enable MedAwatar to deliver cutting-edge healthcare services and solutions to its customers, guaranteeing the clients with data security & privacy, and peace of mind.
According to Nandhavignesh Ram, the CEO Awatarpay Private Limited, the partnership with SUVIK Group will offer a unique opportunity to enhance MedAwatar’s capabilities and provide greater value to customers. The CEO reiterated that XDC’s Plugin will ensure that the digital health platform is secure, reliable, and trusted--- a trait that’s of utmost importance in the healthcare industry.
On the other hand, Vinod Khurana, Co-founder of Plugin and CEO of SUVIK Group, pointed out that the partnership with Awatarpay Private Limited will bring numerous benefits associated with blockchain technology into the healthcare industry. In particular, Vinod noted that leveraging Plugin, which is built upon the XDC blockchain network, will permit MedAwatar to securely and accurately retrieve and verify real-world data. And, in turn, provide MedAwatar’s customers with the highest level of transparency and trust.
So, What’s MedAwatar
MedAwatar is an enterprise-level application that’ll leverage XDC’s blockchain technology to offer unique healthcare services. These services will range from safe, secure, and convenient scheduling of patient appointments to generating unique digital IDs for clients via a blockchain-based decentralized identity management system.
What Unique Benefits will the Plugin-enabled MedAwatar Platform introduce
1. Compliance
Leveraging Plugin’s decentralized oracle system and data networks, MedAwatar will seamlessly improve the verification of patient and healthcare practitioners ID’s, ensuring the privacy and security of sensitive health data. As well, the blockchain-based digital ID system will help get consent from patients on the use of protected healthcare information (PHI).
Together, capabilities unlocked by MedAwatar’s blockchain-based ID system will enhance compliance with laws and standards that protect sensitive patient health information from being misused.
Take the case of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) -- a set of standards that guarantee the security of protected health information, ensuring the availability, confidentiality and integrity of individual health information while also granting access to healthcare providers, clearing houses, and other health-related businesses.
Through a unique and blockchain-based architecture, MedAwatar will integrate safeguards that protect against PHI losses, prioritize patient well-being, facilitate the development of patient-centric healthcare cultures, reduce HIPAA-related liabilities, and improve patient satisfaction scores. This will improve how healthcare providers in India (and in the future, other countries) interact with and derive benefits from protected health information.
Compliance with laws and standards touching on patient information, through the Plugin-enabled Medawatar, will help healthcare facilities manage PHI-related risks and take precautions to avoid associated penalties. This is important in maximizing operational efficiencies and profits in today’s healthcare
2. Convenience
Leveraging the XDC network and Plugin’s oracle network, MedAwatar’s users will have a robust, secure and easily accessible digital health platform. Through the platform, patients and healthcare providers can benefit from ease of communication, ease of remodeling patient-doctor relations, and the improved treatment outcomes.
To elaborate, doctors will easily access patient records via the MedAwatar platform, allowing them to have a deeper understanding of a patient’s treatment history. With a deeper insight into a patient’s condition, doctors and other caregivers will connect easily with patients. And in some cases allow patients to contribute to the development of their treatment plans.
Convenient access to patients’ health statuses will go a long way in building patient-physician trust, helping maintain transparency in the patient-doctor relationship. With accurate and real-time data, MedAwatar will help doctors make exceptional decisions that’ll go into improving a patient’s treatment outcomes. Some of these decisions may include recommending changes in diet, lifestyle, or treatment plans.
Over time, convenience, that’s associated with the blockchain-based healthcare platform, will introduce numerous benefits, improving the quality of healthcare in India and other nations.
3. Scalability
Designed on the XDC blockchain, which has transaction speeds of up to 2000 transactions per second, and leveraging XDC Plugin’s robust data oracle network, MedAwatar will introduce a highly scalable solution for healthcare facilities in India and other parts of the world.
Offering a highly scalable MedAwatar will unlock important benefits for healthcare facilities. Particularly, the scalable solution will allow smaller healthcare facilities to cater for its client’s current needs while preparing for future growth, and reduce expenses incurred during upgrade and training updates for staff.
On the other hand, a scalable MedAwatar will avail clients with a variety of features in addition to securing protected health information and generating unique and blockchain-based ID. These features will help patients have a better experience with the entire healthcare continuum.
4. Improving Workflows
Studies have shown that inefficient clinical workflows in healthcare result in considerable waste in today’s healthcare. However, the introduction of robust digital health platforms has the potential to improve workflows, cutting losses associated with inefficiencies.
In this light, the inception of an XDC-based and Plugin-powered enterprise-level application through the Plugin--Awatarpay partnership will be a game changer in improving workflows.
To elaborate, MedAwatar’s appointment scheduling will play a key role in improving healthcare workflows in Indian hospitals. Particularly, MedAwatar’s appointment scheduling will help automate patient scheduling and the gathering of important information to help doctors prepare for appointments. By employing Plugin’s reliable data protection protocols, MedAwatar will easily employ tools like appointment reminders, pre-visit instructions, patient education, electronic intake forms, surveys, and other message touchpoints to ensure patients arrive for care on time and prepared. This will help healthcare providers to fill informational gaps and plan their workflows in advance.
Eventually, improved workflows will help improve the efficiency of Indian facilities, enhancing treatment outcomes and increasing the utility of healthcare resources in the care continuum.
5. Eliminating No-shows and Resulting Costs
Patients not attending doctor’s appointments (also referred to as no-shows) significantly affect the cost of care and resource planning within today’s healthcare setup. No shows also lead to loss of anticipated revenue, particularly for healthcare services that are expensive and in high demand.
That said, MedAwatar’s automated appointment scheduling service will use verified data from Plugin to develop configurable appointment reminders. These will ensure that patients get notified of scheduled appointments and informed of different requirements prior to their arrival. As well, the system will integrate communication touchpoints on portable devices, which will help boost communication between patients and healthcare practitioners, prior to any appointment. In the event a patient won't show up for an appointment, they can easily cancel the appointment on time, helping healthcare facilities reduce losses associated with unused man-hours and other resource.
Over time, MedAwatar’s digital appointment scheduling system will help cut the number of no-shows, optimizing resource utilization and maximize revenues therein.
6. Interoperability
Interoperability, which stands for the ability of different tech systems to communicate and interact with one another, is another unique benefit that MedAwatar will introduce.
By leveraging XDC’s hybrid blockchain, MedAwatar will communicate easily with systems built on different blockchain networks, or numerous solutions within the ever-expanding XDC ecosystem. To add, working with Plugin’s wide array of data sets, MedAwatar will easily communicate with systems that employ unique data to deliver their services in the healthcare space.
With high interoperability, MedAwatar will benefit from high scalability, fast operational speeds and nearly non-existent gas fees. This will help MedAwatar provide an exceptional healthcare platform, helping boost healthcare within India.
Final Thoughts
As the healthcare space continues to evolve, there's a need to adopt solutions that consider new shifts in healthcare as well as leverage new innovations to boost the quality of healthcare. One of the unique ways to develop and integrate innovative healthcare solutions is through game-changing partnerships. An example: the Plugin--Awatarpay partnership.
The collaboration will steer the development of MedAwatar--a healthcare solution that’ll streamline patient scheduling, generating unique user IDs for healthcare users, and more. By leveraging the XDC blockchain network and Plugin’s distributed oracle network, the enterprise solution will avail numerous benefits to India’s healthcare. These benefits relate to compliance, convenience, scalability, improved workflows, reducing no-shows, and high interoperability.
Discussion (1)
SUVIK Technologies LLC and GoPlugIn (PLI) continue to make moves on the XDC Network! There is much much more coming in 2023! This TEAM is unstoppable! Well done Team, your community is very proud of the progress you are making! 🔥 There is no other team that takes #BUILDonXDC as serious as you guys! So many DApps in the RoadMap👀 drive.google.com/file/d/1MKXv7aspI...