We all know the blockchain space is well-hyped, and many companies use that hype to their advantage.

Our mission at Disruptor Daily is to drive the adoption of blockchain technology, and to do that, we’re highlighting those companies that are truly leveraging the blockchain for all its potential.

To help recognize the companies out there developing practical use cases for the healthcare industry, we are excited to announce our first annual Blockchain In Healthcare Use Case Award!

Here’s how the awards will work:

Our readers have nominated the companies below and until October 11th, you will now have the chance to vote for your favorite use case!

This is your opportunity to vote for the companies you feel have the most practical blockchain use case for the healthcare industry.

In order to be an eligible voter, please follow the steps below:

Step 1: Carefully review the use cases below and vote for the one you feel could have the biggest impact.

Step 2: Cast your vote

Step 3: Share this page and encourage others to vote!

*To maintain the integrity of the awards series, ALL votes must be linked to a LinkedIn page. We will manually review each vote and ensure there is a legitimate LinkedIn profile associated with the name. All votes that do not pass this test will be discarded*

Traditional real world health data collection is costly and inefficient, with a high probability of data mis-representation due to a variance in patient access to services. Data mis-matching and exposure to personal information due to human error are further contributors to these inefficiencies. Bowhead Health through its mobile application called Better by Bowhead is a health data marketplace and platform that securely and seamlessly captures diverse, real world data. We believe health data can empower people to make better choices and live longer healthier lives.

Bowhead Health helps users own and manage their behavior health data to better understand themselves and contribute their health data to medical research. Our robust platform uses smart contracts to manage health data encryption, people provide consent with digital signatures, where they can opt-in and become vendors of their anonymized health data.

Bowhead Health also develops a self-serve platform that allows researchers to create campaigns with advanced targeting based on demographics and a user’s health conditions to gain commercial insights. Once users match the preferences this anonymous health data is presented as easy to read charts and visuals. This platform allows healthcare companies to undertake real world research to understand and develop treatments for disease.

Fulfillment of a healthcare claims payment involves multiple parties and complex steps. Actors in the fulfillment process include Financial Institutions (FI)/Banks, Payments Processors, Gateways, Payment Networks, etc. During the fulfillment process, certain rule-based actions result in the money and data movement from a payer’s FI to a payee’s FI—for example, an insurer making payment to a healthcare provider via their designated banks. Proper tracking and reconciliation of the fulfillment steps is a challenge since these entities operate independently on legacy IT systems with complex integrations for data transfer. This results in increased operational effort, poor customer experience, delayed payments, and sometimes financial loss.

Using DLT technology and smart contracts, Change Healthcare has created a POC of a blockchain-enabled payment network where Insurance Payers, Healthcare Providers, FI/Banks, Processors, Gateways, Payment Networks, etc., can participate as a network entity. This provides transparency and a real-time view of the fulfillment process to all participants in the network. Smart contracts are leveraged to ensure proper business rules are enforced during the execution of each step in the fulfillment process between parties involved. For example, a FI does not release funds unless the processor confirms that the settlement request has been received. The solution demonstrates how this blockchain-enabled payments network for healthcare can deliver highly efficient and transparent payment processing resulting in a great customer experience and simultaneously help reduce unnecessary costs in healthcare.

Lack of trust in the management of healthcare data is a major impediment to collecting and sharing comprehensive data that could be valuable for improving healthcare research and treatment. For example, research shows that families dealing with Substance Use Disorders (“SUDs,” aka addictions) often do not seek treatment due to privacy concerns. Furthermore, healthcare providers are often reluctant to collect and share data due to the regulatory burden of managing highly sensitive information in an environment where consent can be unclear. The resulting lack of engagement by patients and caregivers alike results in a paucity of available trusted data upon which innovative solutions can be built.

The CoverUS “RESPECT Consent System,” a blockchain-based consent schema, and the associated CoverUS Marketplace, will help deliver newfound transparency about data governance and usage in healthcare. RESPECT uses blockchain technologies to collect and manage consent metadata about the permitted usage of a user’s health and other real-world information in a manner that:

is context-aware (e.g.: share my data with my doctor but not with a company)

documents adherence to user consent choices in a manner that is independently verifiable and immutable

supports storage of sensitive personally identifiable information under the decentralized sovereign control of the users themselves.

facilitates users consenting to have their anonymized metadata anonymously matched with relevant providers and researchers, thus enabling the future operation of an incentivized and privacy-protected two-way trust marketplace.

The system is an exemplar of how the healthcare industry can improve transparency about what is and isn't being done with our personal health information, in order to recover trust, thus contributing to our ability to improve interoperability between systems storing health data, and more directly engage patients as key stakeholders in their data value chains, in order to better fill real-world data gaps for research and patient treatment. This all rolls up to a more efficient and ethical future state of the healthcare system.

Dentacoin is the first and only blockchain solution for the global dental industry. It is composed of various applications that serve as a smart patient loyalty program, a dental assurance model based on smart contracts between patients and dentists, and a cryptocurrency used as a means of payment primarily by but not limited to patients, dentists, suppliers, manufacturers, service providers.

Dentacoin is developing a new dental ecosystem where blockchain is intelligently applied to:

Make preventive dental care affordable to people with lower costs and/or no private insurances – through Dentacoin Assurance;

Help people improve their poor oral hygiene habits through a dedicated app – Dentacare;

Provide the missing reliable market data about patients’ opinions/needs through DentaVox surveys;

Deliver the infrastructure for trusted and detailed patient feedback for dentists to improve upon – Dentacoin Trusted Reviews;

Secure and ease all payments while reducing transaction costs through an industry-specific cryptocurrency (Dentacoin, DCN) and the Dentacoin Wallet dApp. More than 90K individuals and 1.8K dental offices already use the Dentacoin software solutions, while 90+ locations in 25+ countries accept payments in the currency.

Tens of millions of people are doing genetic tests for ancestry insights and a large majority of them are letting the testing companies resell their data. Researchers need more access to data generally, and users are providing it essentially free of charge. This allows the testing companies to profit several times over above the test costs, and the people whose data are being sold do not have either a say or any reward when their data is sold.

EncrypGen's Gene-Chain marketplace is the world's first blockchain mediated free market for genetic data. Users can take their test data and upload it for free, creating a profile, setting a price, and get paid directly through our blockchain using $DNA, its native cryptocurrency, and there is a permanent audit trail for all transactions, providing greater transparency. In our free market, the access and ability to profit are democratized and decentralized encouraging a greater flow of valuable data.

Etheal is using artificial intelligence to alert its platform users to the best dental care on a worldwide scale. It encompasses a suite of apps and services including telemedicine, medical tourism-focused services, and the ability to browse and match with a global network of dentists.

Guardtime offers enterprise-level blockchain cybersecurity services. Their areas of focus include but aren’t limited to the insurance, health, and cryptocurrency exchange sectors.

The blockchain-based solution enables organizations seeking health information to connect with individuals who are willing to share their data for incentives. The distributed architecture of HIT allows for a secure and anonymous matching between information seekers and individuals who can provide the necessary information without the need for a central database and intermediaries. Tokenizing the value of health data is a revolutionary way to motivate individuals to digitize and share their data. With HIT tokens individuals are enabled to pay for health services and monetize their data themselves.

Partners are organizations 1) looking for individuals participating in research or monitoring treatment outcome; 2) managing the consent to analyze existing health data, possible sharing revenues with the individuals who generated the data; 3) rewarding individuals for certain behavior, e.g. treatment adherence or reaching a goal in prevention programs; 4) offering services for crypto-currency and 5) targeting individuals with tailored information.

Patient non-adherence to healthcare provider-suggested behaviors, medications, and treatments cause an alarming rate of unnecessary illness, death, and increased costs to the healthcare system. Further, there is an mHealth App overload problem in the healthcare industry, creating fragmentation and a limitation in usefulness for users/patients when it comes to their health and wellness.

Mosio is creating a blockchain-leveraged open source secure mobile messenger for healthcare and research that pays people in cryptocurrency (Clinicoin) to take part in health and wellness activities.

Leveraging its existing patient engagement platform currently used by leading research universities, cancer centers, and biopharma companies, the messenger will be available to the healthcare and medical research industries, providing a HIPAA and 21 CFR Part 11 (FDA) compliant platform, disrupting the mobile app walled garden that hinders innovation in mHealth technologies. Younger consumers enjoy gamification, direct engagement, and depend on mobile technology for their personal and work lives. By incentivizing people to use the messenger to log their healthy activities, making wellness fun, and providing the platform as open source for the healthcare and research communities to further develop, the industry and users both will benefit from having a universal secure messaging system.

The uptick in data breaches and the vulnerability of electronic health records (EHR) underline the need to protect patients' medical and personal information. Healthcare is fragmented and there wasn’t a way for patients to track and control their medical information. There was also an opportunity for a solution to enable healthcare providers to be compliant in meeting the GDPR and HIPAA regulations, two significant hurdles that have prevented consumers from successfully accessing their healthcare data. Patients with chronic conditions frequently require numerous tests, duplicative tests, screenings or blood work, which are common and costly. Patients and providers alike need a safe way to track medical history and coordinate care without fear of data breaches.

Patientory is enhancing cybersecurity by changing the way patients securely manage their health history and interact with their care team by leveraging blockchain technology. Patientory users create an individual profile on the company's mobile app where their medical information is stored in the secure, HIPAA-compliant blockchain platform, which then allows them to connect with other patients who have similar health issues or concerns, their physicians and their care team. In addition, patient and clinician users can engage Patientory's platform to better manage the patient's care across multiple teams, both inside and outside of the hospital. Patientory's technology is compatible with a number of EHR systems, including Epic, Cerner, Allscripts and Meditech. With Patientory, patients are people first. Treating them holistically requires the use of insights from clinical and non-clinical data. To achieve full integration of social determinants of health (SDOH) into healthcare, collaboration among clinical and social entities is necessary to redefine how healthcare serves people.

To achieve this, Patientory utilizes blockchain technology —that is managed by distributing nodes, each of which contains a copy of the file and requires users to agree to changes. The more nodes there are in the chain, the stronger the base is. This setup makes blockchain less susceptible to hacking. Since the whole care team can view a patient's health history, providers are much less likely to rerun tests. This approach allows costs to go down and patient’s control of their own healthcare data.

Siloed Data: Researchers, pharmaceutical organisations and academia all face the challenges with obtaining data which can be used to help further their research. Even if a researcher obtains a genetic data file online, he/she would have to scour databases in order to find the right metadata associated with the patient.

Through Shivom’s state-of-the-art blockchain and AI powered platform we provide researchers with a best-in-class data and analytics platform which guarantees patient confidentiality and control. This is achieved through smart-contract technology and permissioning. On Shivom, consumers can specify who they would like to share their data with and receive financial incentives from the researcher for their contribution. Through smart-contract technology, Shivom is able to record permissions using the consumers private key on Ethereum’s public chain. Following this activity, we enable the selected researchers to gain access to not only genetic files but metadata associated from various accounts the user belongs to online.

In much of the developed world our population is ageing rapidly. Increased demand for care is placing an intolerable burden upon already stretched healthcare resources. Complex support infrastructures, data system silos and administrative bureaucracy have given rise to inefficiency and duplication of effort that waste billions of dollars. Incredibly, up to 30% of medical bills can go towards paying administrative costs. Excessive healthcare administration costs consume resources that should be directed to improving both access to care and quality of care.

Solve.Care platform uses Blockchain as the underlying distributed ledger to completely change the way coordination of care, benefit administration and real-time payments are accomplished in healthcare. The innovative use of Blockchain allows for configuration of patient centric care administration networks that allow participation based on disease conditions, economic and social needs, employment, and other eligibility criteria. Users of Solve.Care Care Administration Networks can track and manage everything by using Care.Wallet that takes place on their networks with all transactions and events instantaneously available to all users. The records are immutable, which reduces fraud and abuse. Solve.Care also uses Blockchain to issue intelligent payment tokens that accelerate the healthcare payment cycle, saving time and reducing costs. Healthcare organizations can immediately see resource use and receive systemwide data, leading to higher organizational efficiency which results in less waste and more efficient patient-centric care. Solve.Care platform delegates authority to the patient and provider, resulting in decentralized administration of healthcare services.

Ensuring medical devices are safe and in good order throughout their life cycle is a huge challenge for health systems and medical device manufacturers. McKinsey research has shown manufacturers lose 7 to 9% of revenues, or over $30 billion, to quality events. In a value-based setting, health systems are also on the hook for safety events that could lead to complications, injuries and deaths.

While supply chain tracking helps, volumes and complexity are exploding. Too, connectivity, interoperability, software and algorithms are introducing significant cyber-vulnerabilities. Medium-to-large health systems typically have over 100,000 assets, of which 15% are connected. These devices are often inter-operable with other devices, pharmacy systems and EHRs.

Further, device and equipment servicing is highly fragmented between underfunded in-house health tech managers and dozens of manufacturers' technicians, and/or 3rd party service providers. Data, system and organizational silos obscure the condition and service history of devices at the point of care and across a device's life cycle, which often extends over a decade.

Grounded in the use of unique device identifiers (UDIs) and GS1 data standards, the Spiritus platform leverages investments in such technologies as barcodes, passive and active RFID, and RTLS (real-time location services). At its core, Spiritus brings together DLT/blockchain, geospatial services, risk management tools, and tailored analytics to improve transparency, traceability and verifiability of a medical device's safety and condition at the point of care.