There are currently seven forks of bitcoin today, and although forking itself isn't inherently bad, it can lead to chaos and slower development time and hinder the adoption of blockchain in industries such as healthcare. Healthcare protocols require secure and certified nodes and fast upgrades to deal with sudden security issues, which is why we at SimplyVital Health are implementing a new governance protocol to handle updating and node validation for Health Nexus.

A governance protocol is, simply put, a group of individuals representing different healthcare providers, agencies, or digital health companies that participate in Health Nexus. They provide guidance and vote on system upgrades, as well as validating nodes to ensure HIPAA compliance.

Consortium Members and Nodes

The first thing to mention is that our governance protocol has two different members that participate, consortium members and nodes.

Consortium members will be the primary drivers of this system, and their role is to propose and vote on upgrades, propose new members to the consortium, impeach members of the consortium, and validate nodes for security purposes. These consortium members will be seeded into the system initially as part of non-profit organization, and new members from healthcare providers and patient advocates will be added as the Health Nexus ecosystem grows. The consortium members will currently need a simple majority of the vote to pass proposals.

The next users are the nodes, who are mainly there to keep the consortium in check. Nodes have the ability to vote on upgrades as well, and can also impeach other consortium members, creating a system of checks and balances to ensure that members act in a responsible fashion.

Upgrades and Validation

We can’t predict the future, but we can make sure that Health Nexus is able to take advantage of new technologies to remain relevant. That is why we allow consortium members to propose protocol upgrades at pre-determined times. These updates will be voted on by the entire consortium, and pass or fail based on a simple majority.

If the vote passes, the upgrade is propagated moves to a testing network, and after a cycle in the test net it is voted on again. If the second vote passes the upgrade will carry through to the main net.

Consortium members are also responsible for validating the nodes that power Health Nexus. It should come as no surprise that the healthcare industry will require their nodes to go through a vetting and validation process. Nodes on the Health nexus network will be vetted by consortium members before they are able to process actions. We are looking at multiple options to streamline the vetting process, but initially this will be done by miners submitting themselves to a HIPAA audit. If the audit passes they submit the audit to a consortium member, who will add them to the network.

This is all done to ensure a robust, secure and sustainable ecosystem for the healthcare industry, while allowing providers and patients to provide quick and easy access to viral medical data.

Democracy In Action

For Health Nexus to be successful, it must attract healthcare providers. To do that, we must be able to ensure Health Nexus is safe from abuse both outside the network, and within. By creating a governing consortium that votes on upgrades, rather than mandates, we can instill a sense of ownership of Health Nexus for all participants.

It also means that no matter what happens to SimplyVital Health, Health Nexus can remain operational. We may be on the consortium, or we may not, but neither we nor anyone else will ever wield absolute power. Health Nexus is by the people, for the people, a practical application of cryptocurrency ethos in action.