Name of Project: [Health link] MVP for data onboarding funnel to bring primary care data on-chain into OCEAN
Category : Existing project (Category 2) – A “Build” project to develop a user onboarding funnel prototype for a dApp that aims to use Ocean to tokenise health data.
Fundamental metrics : Data-token contracts
One-sentence summary :
A grant is requested to build a software prototype for a dApp that aims to use Ocean to tokenise primary care data through a pilot with an existing community of doctors engaged through the previous grant. This project seeks to leverage OCEAN in bringing healthcare data on-chain and accrue value to end-users such as patients and healthcare providers, who are excluded from the traditional healthcare data economy despite being the primary contributors of this data.
Description of the project background:
This project seeks to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) for a pilot with the community of doctors engaged through the 1st Healthlink Ocean DAO grant. Our aim is to unlock healthcare data in order to drive discoveries of new treatments and democratize participation in the healthcare data economy for all end-users, including patients and allied healthcare providers themselves (Nurses, Dieticians, etc). Further details and background to the problem being solved have been described in the previous application.
The core study findings from the initial review (deliverable 1 from the previous proposal) have been published at this link. These findings are translated in the form of the proposed product to address the public health gaps that have been identified and address the shortcomings of existing solution. We utilise an agile approach to align with the new format and scope of Ocean DAO grants, and have planned the scope of this grant application accordingly. We aim to develop an MVP and conduct an early pilot with primary care practitioners to ensure the alignment of user journeys with existing clinical pathways for ease of adoption, as well as to assist the development team in prioritizing the development of subsequent modules (data request board, front-end UI to facilitate contribution of tokenized data into the Ocean marketplace, etc).
Please find a summary below, and a description of how the activities funded in the previous grant have facilitated the conceptualization of the product. We have uploaded a mock-up of the minimum viable product (MVP) of our intended dApp and embedded it in this video to highlight the targeted user journeys for initial user and data onboarding and exchange.
Description of the problem:
In the course of literature review, it was found that all existing relevant reports were in early stage of technology readiness, whereby most solutions did not have primary clinical validation data involving patients. These are illustrated in the 3-category breakdown of (1) Technical design description, (2) Technical demonstration, and (3) Clinical translation (mostly cross-sectional descriptions) depicted in Figure 3.
Electronic health records (EHR) were the leading public health application of blockchain described in the literature published by many previous researchers from different countries (Figure 4 of the publication). EHR applications of blockchain have had a steady 70% year-on-year increase in publications. Yet, few progressed to the clinical translation/ implementation stage, and appear to have been lost in the “chasm” of the technology adoption life cycle (TALC). We posit that this is due to the enterprise (B2B) nature of the offerings of the products in the reviewed studies, resulting in privacy concerns due to lack of patient consent in the sharing/custody of data by 3rd party organisations. That said, the only 1 study of such a program that obtained patients feedback found that they indicated strong interest in a patient health record product, particularly 1 that gives them greater visibility over their health record with notifications regarding any updates that are made.
The findings from this research have validated the clinical need identified in multiple countries/regions as well as the user demand for a digital health record product that gives patients greater access and control over their data. It has also identified various other avenues of horizontal service expansion (such as drug/medical device supply chain monitoring, medical device/IoT data integrations, etc) that can integrate with the digital health record product as the initial platform dApp offering for vertical penetration into the healthcare industry.
Description of the solution:
Therefore, we formulated a strategy to develop a crypto-native personal health record (PHR) product that addresses the clinical needs for secure and trustless health data custody and sharing. This is embodied by the primary offering for consumers (B2C) that incorporates patient consent for any health data accession, annotation, or sharing, in order to address prevailing privacy concerns. This is the necessary initial ground work for the onboarding funnel for data that can subsequently be tokenized in future modules in a model for financializing health data that incorporates individual consent. Future modules will incorporate staking functionalities for patients to deposit their tokenised health data to earn a yield via the OCEAN data marketplace from interested payers (e.g. pharmaceutical companies requesting health data for research) opening up enterprise (B2B) offerings for health data commercialisation.
Grant deliverables:
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1) Development sprint to code a clinician user and data onboarding funnel illustrated here.
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2) Pilot with primary care providers to explore alignment with existing clinical practice, measures required to facilitate adoption, and pre-populate an interested list of early adopters for the product.
How the project drives value
The end-goal at the end of 9-12 months is to increase total number of OCEAN data token contracts and consuming volume by conceiving a clinically-sound approach and onboarding ramp for healthcare data into the OCEAN data economy with participation from an active community of practicing clinicians with private practices that can independently participate without the bureaucracy of larger traditional healthcare organisations.
Funding request : USD$10,000
OCEAN wallet : 0x8246137C39BB05261972655186A868bdC8a9Eb11
Previously received an OCEAN grant : Yes
Team details :
Dr. Dinesh Guna
- • Role: Domain expert/ Clinical lead
- • Linkedin: https://sg.linkedin.com/in/dineshvg
- • Background:
- o Medical Doctor, graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS)
- o Concurrently served as Head (Health Informatics) in the Collaborative Ocular Tuberculosis (TB) Study group from 2011-2019, overseeing the collaboration of 25 hospitals across 10 countries. He served on the internatonal steering committee for COTS-1, and was named a lead author for peer-reviewed manuscripts in COTS-1 including the COTS landmark paper published in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). COTS used cloud computing and big data to develop international diagnostic and treatment consensus guidelines for ocular TB, that are being used daily by Uveitis experts, Ophthalmic surgeons and eye specialists worldwide today.
- o Awarded the Commonwealth Fellowship in Innovation from the British High Commission of Singapore, and funded for research training at Oxford University while furthering COTS in Moorfields Hospital, London.
- o Co-founded telehealth company Doctorbell in 2017 with Patrick and colleagues (acquired 2018) overseeing product strategy and medical affairs
- o Subsequently appointed Physician leader (Telemedicine) at Raffles Medical group (SGX:$BSL), where he actively promotes health education for patient empowerment and greater ownership of health outcomes.
- o Published over 30 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals including JAMA Ophthalmology, Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, Lancet Digital Health, and Nature Digital Medicine, and is an invited reviewer in several journals including the BMJ, JAMA Ophthalmology and Nature Digital Medicine.
- o Named the 2019 NUS Young Alumnus (Medicine) of the year for contributions to health education and screening programs for underprivileged communities and beneficiaries in the Geylang and Chinatown regions.
Patrick Poh
- • Role: Product manager/Chief Technology Officer
- • Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/patrick-poh-huan-yu
- • Background:
- o Graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a Bachelors in Computer Engineering in 2016, and received the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Singapore book prize for his honors project applying NFC technology for medication reminders.
- o Co-founded a Telemedicine startup, Doctorbell, acquired in 2018 by MaNaDr
- o Subsequently lead developer and director of business development at MaNaDr, where he spearheaded product development, multiple commercial initiatives and partnerships. He was later promoted to role of chief development officer where he managed a multinational team of developers in Singapore and Hanoi, Vietnam to accelerate the development of the health tech platform.
Advisor : A/Prof Leong Choon Kit
Family Physician
MBBS, GDFM, M.Med (PH), MCFP(S), FCFCP(S), FAMS (Family Medicine)
A/Prof Leong had his training in Public Health and Family Medicine, has his interest pique in public policy and social issues. He had co-authored the Adult Vaccination Guidelines with several Infectious Disease colleagues in 2016, 2018 and 2020 in Singapore, and has been a strong advocate for vaccination in the primary care.
His experiences in medical mission put him in touch with health promotion and disease prevention locally and overseas. He contributes his time in the community, schools, social services on top of healthcare institutions, committees and advocacy groups.
Some of these interests he advocated strongly include but not limited to are healthcare systems and model of care, medical ethics, smoking control, issues related to teenage suicide, special needs children and their family and prevention of cancer via vaccine. He manages the Tampines Family Medicine Clinic and leads the Class Primary Care Network (PCN). He is also the founder and chairman of the GP+ Co-operative Limited representing over 60 clinics in Singapore.
Besides clinical and consultancy work, A/Prof Leong is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Duke-NUS and Yong Loo Lin school of Medicine, NUS. and an adjunct clinical instructor at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. He is also involved in post graduate training with the College of Family Physician Singapore and Family Medicine Residency program with National Health Group Polyclinics and SingHealth Polyclinics. A/Prof. Leong believes in developing the future generation and he is involved in mentoring younger students and doctors in medicine, technology as well as developing their medical practice in the private sector.
