June 2018 - Embleema Launches the First Personal Health Records Blockchain in July 2017
Embleema, today emerged from stealth, to launch the public beta release of its patient-driven, HIPAA-compliant, personal health records Blockchain. Built on Ethereum, the leading smart-contract platform, and available today after one year of R&D, Embleema aims to solve the challenges associated with collection and safe sharing of Real World Evidence (RWE). Embleema restores precision and transparency in the healthcare and clinical trials industry, by allowing patients to consolidate, own and directly share their data with healthcare stakeholders, and receive payment via cryptocurrency tokens for their participation. Embleema’s leadership team holds more than 100 years of industry experience in life sciences, healthcare data, wearable, digital health and Blockchain technology across the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific. <br />
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“We focus on real data from real patients in the real world, and our mission is to turn the bottle upside down and put patients first in the healthcare system” said Robert Chu, CEO and Founder of Embleema.” Blockchain removes the need for third parties to broker the sharing of patient data, which is a multi-billion dollar industry, while providing the most accurate data possible for precision medicine to succeed and allowing patients to maintain sovereignty over their data. ” Chu left his role as Senior Vice President, Global Technology Solutions at IMS Health, a global leader in healthcare data, to found Embleema in June 2017. <br />
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Today, drugs are primarily developed with data collected in controlled research environments, which fails to capture the efficacy of treatments in real-life setting. 32 percent of drugs approved by the FDA are affected by a postmarket safety event, prompting regulators to demand direct access to post-market raw data from life sciences. Current methods of gathering data on adverse effects and efficacy are slow, and lack precision due to the absence of active patient involvement. This has worsened public health crises, generating a vicious circle of distrust between between patients, life sciences, and regulators, and is delaying the availability of new drugs to patients. <br />
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Giving patients complete control over their healthcare data:<br />
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Embleema’s health blockchain and decentralized app (DApp), PatientTruth, enable patients to assemble the full picture of their health from multiple sources. It rewards them with crypto-tokens for securely storing medical records generated by their multiple healthcare providers through uploading of HL7 Continuity of Care Documents (CCDs) as well as data from connected health devices, beginning with Fitbit. <br />
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"With a decentralized public ledger, patients can truly be the stewards of their own data. Blockchain infrastructure provides three benefits — a ledger of where a patient's records are to be found, smart contracts to determine who can access those records under which conditions, and security keys to ensure only authorized parties access the data under the patient’s terms. Blockchain isn’t here to replace Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), but to create more balance within the healthcare system by giving patients complete control over their treatment and how their data is used.” - Dr. John D. Halamka, International Healthcare Innovation Professor at Harvard Medical School, Chief Information Officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Embleema advisory board member. <br />
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Today, RWE studies suffer from three major deficiencies that lead to poor findings:<br />
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-Reliance on low-resolution aggregated data sets sold by third party data brokers, rather than high-resolution -individual patient data <br />
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-Inability to monitor the same patient over extended periods of time, which allows for much better research and drug development <br />
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-Loose individual patient consent collection, <br />
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Embleema’s blockchain allows patients to consent to real-time data sharing with pharmaceutical companies and healthcare authorities.This will improve real-time detection of safety issues and assessment of efficacy down to the patient level, and benefit the entire health system.<br />
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Features of PatientTruth V1 Decentralized Application:<br />
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-Visualization of Medical Histories and Fitbit activity data shared by patients<br />
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-Upload Continuity of Care Documents (CCD) medical records into blockchain, with further support of other HL7 and -FHIR interfaces in the future<br />
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-Upload of Fitbit information into blockchain, with further integration of other connected devices in the future<br />
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-Medical History stored securely on blockchain<br />
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-Authorization management for the sharing of the Medical History<br />
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-Audit-trail of personal Medical Records accesses<br />
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Compensation in tokens for uploading CCDs and Fitbit information, as well as referrals of new patients and providers<br />
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Patients and healthcare professionals can be the first to use the Embleema health blockchain and PatientTruth Dapp by joining the community at https://www.embleema.com. These users can be be a pioneer for the new era of patient data stewardship. Healthcare organizations can also pilot the Embleema health blockchain network as part of our Consortium at https://www.embleema.com/#consortium.