Recent Progress on the Laboratory of National GPO Platform Launched by THEKEY TheKey Follow Nov 6, 2018 · 4 min read

- A Field Study in Guangdong Province in China

China’s Basic Medical Insurance System involves over 1.4 billion people, forming the largest health insurance program in the world. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a national group purchasing organization (GPO) platform to provide healthcare products, services and relevant knowledge to hospitals, pharmacies and individuals at highly discounted prices. In this context, the Laboratory of the National GPO of Healthcare Resources was jointly established by China Association of Social Security (CAOSS), Social Medical Insurance Bureau of Heilongjiang Province and THEKEY in August, 2018 (https://nulltx.com/national-group-purchasing-of-healthcare-resources-kick-off-meeting-hosted-by-thekey-in-beijing/). It is aiming at fundamentally reducing the procurement cost of the healthcare products and services based on blockchain and big data technologies.

Kick-off meeting for the Laboratory in August, 2018, Beijing

In mid-October, the research team of the Laboratory conducted a field research in Guangdong Province, a pilot region in bidding and purchasing of healthcare product. As the largest Chinese province in population, Guangdong Province covers 109 million people, including 9 million senior citizens. Its expenditure of Basic Medical Insurance in year 2017 exceeds $132million. With such a colossal medical insurance program, Guangdong is taken as a good sample for GPO research. The research is aiming at exchanging ideas and experiences in the development of GPO platform, which will be a solid foundation for the successful completion and launch of the Laboratory. Led by Shuguang Shen, Vice President of CAOSS, Director of Healthcare Security Specialized Committee, and Professor of Sun Yat-sen University, and Dr. Kun Chen, Chief Marketing Officer of THEKEY, the research team consisted of Professor Shaoguo Zhai of Northwest University, Associate Professor Wan Wang of University of International Business and Economics, Professor Yangdong Fan of Guangdong Medical University, Associate Professor Yingying Ma of South China Agricultural University etc.

A seminar was firstly held at Sun Yat-sen University, one of the top 10 universities featuring medical science and pharmacology with the largest affiliated hospital system in China. Ping Wang, Guangdong Province’s branch leader of Xi’an Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd. (https://www.xian-janssen.com.cn/en), one of China’s largest pharmaceutical companies, introduced the development and current situations of medicine group purchasing organizations in the region. During the workshop, key issues related to establish the GPO platform, such as pilots in drug bulk purchase, drug pricing mechanisms and medical insurance settlement standards, triggered heated discussions.

The team then visited Guangdong Medicine Exchange Center. Feng Yu, General Manager of the Center, hosted the conference and introduced the function, working mechanisms, management model and transaction flow of the Center. According to statistics, the total transaction volume of the Center exceeded $50 billion since its establishment in 2013, saving $4 billion for the medical procurement fund, which on average reduced the price of drugs by 9.29%. The “price comparison and competition mechanism” has been applied innovatively by the Center to help reduce drug prices. Utilizing the national social insurance data on the GPO platform developed by THEKEY and CAOSS can further reduce the price of drugs and at the same time better guarantee the quality of drugs.

Work conference with leaders and experts of Guangdong Medicine Exchange Center

According to the development plan of THEKEY GPO platform, there will be further surveys conducted in Xiamen and Shanghai, and the mid-term evaluation seminar will be held in the pilot region — Heilongjiang Province in December.

About THEKEY

THEKEY is a decentralized ecosystem of Identity Verification (IDV) tools integrating national big-data and the blockchain. THEKEY’s project team is now developing its identification verification (IDV) tool with blockchain using its proprietary Dynamic Multi-dimension Identification (BDMI) platform, uniquely using Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that has been exclusively authorized by the Chinese Government. THEKEY token (TKY token) is the only method by which to settle smart contracts signed between all participants across THEKEY Ecosystem. THEKEY testnet was launched in May 2018, and its mainnet is scheduled to be released at the end of this year. TKY is currently tradable across a number of exchange platforms such as HitBTC, Bit-Z, KuCoin, Lbank, Coinrail and LATOKEN.

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