As one of the first digital healthcare companies using blockchain technology in a revenue generating application we get a ton of questions about the blockchain and how it works.

I understand the curiosity and the confusion.

Blockchains and other decentralized technology are relatively new. So new, I think it’s fair to say that we are still in the infancy of decentralized technology. It’s not just the technology though, as a species we are in the earliest stages of understanding how best to make use of these innovations.

There’s a ton of hype around blockchains. If you plan on reading up on the subject you better get your waders on: soon you’re going to be knee deep in buzzwords, exaggerated claims or worse. You’re going to read words like disruptive, revolutionary, game-changing, break-through. Often those words will be in reference to specific protocols or projects.

Anyone who can navigate the morass of marketing spin and technological gobbledygook that surrounds blockchains and arrive on solid ground deserves major props.

It’s with that in mind that I’m going to tell you about Health Nexus and how we see the healthcare industry adopting decentralized technology. I’m going to keep this as hype-free as I possibly can so as not to add to the quagmire that surrounds this tech.

In my last article I dove into transactions and how Health Nexus is shaping up differently than Ethereum with regard to those. I’m going to lean on that a bit in discussing cryptocurrency and how the healthcare industry is likely to use it.

Cryptocurrency is fundamental to successful blockchains for a few reasons:

Blocks can only contain a finite number of transactions. There are only two ways to program a system to allocate finite resources: pricing mechanisms or rationing algorithms. Pricing mechanisms are more effective when the demand is not entirely known beforehand.

I’m not going to elaborate on that much except to say that those three points are foundational to crypto-economics and explain why blockchains not only use cryptocurrency but require it.

Health Nexus, like Ethereum, will require the use of cryptocurrency. On Health Nexus we call it health cash (on Ethereum it’s ether). But how will healthcare providers use cryptocurrency? Will there be a purchasing agent in the IT department of your local hospital responsible for procuring cryptocurrency for the various decentralized applications they use?

Maybe in the future. Today, we don’t think they are quite there yet.

We believe the fastest way to get the healthcare industry using decentralized technology is to give third-party service providers an easy way to meter cryptocurrency use for their customers. Those third-party providers will be able to enter traditional commercial agreements with healthcare providers and include use fees as part of those agreements, providing a very familiar interface to the healthcare industry.

This decentralization as a service (DAAS) model will make it possible for every healthcare provider to participate on Health Nexus.

Of course, from the get go, healthcare providers and patients will be able to procure their own health cash and use it for any application. We expect crypto-savy consumers to take advantage of this. But if they run out will the decentralized applications stop working? Not for those with commercial agreements that include cryptocurrency usage. They can benefit from buying health cash themselves and having their service providers provide it if needed.

These flexible payment models are enabled by changes in the blockchain protocol I discussed in the last article, and are just one example of how Health Nexus is designed specifically for healthcare.

No hype. We’re bringing decentralized technology to healthcare. Is that disruptive, revolutionary, or game-changing? I don’t know. It’s sure is cool though.

For more information about Health Nexus checkout our whitepaper. To follow up with questions about Health Nexus or our token sale find us in our telegram group.

About SimplyVital Health:

SimplyVital Health is making decentralized technology accessible to the healthcare industry by creating Health Nexus, a healthcare-grade blockchain and paired data storage. Their principal application, ConnectingCare, augments existing hospital care systems to extract data and create care pathway flexibility, prospectively track financials, maintain immutable records, and accurately monitor analytics.

Website: https://tokensale.simplyvitalhealth.com/

News and Articles by us: https://medium.com/simplyvital