The following is a guest article by Dr. Jaideep Rayapudi, MD MBBS, Digital Health Technology thought leader and registered physician of Global Telehealth Exchange by Solve.Care.
Barriers to healthcare exacerbate already dire consequences, as has been seen on the ground in India over the past few months. Technology can help.
The disparities in the quality and availability of healthcare across the globe are significant. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the roll out of vaccines worldwide has further exemplified how economic gaps between nations can have devastating effects on the nature of care received. The most significant barriers to affordable healthcare which currently exist are gaps in knowledge, limited access to healthcare, and, most importantly, severely restricted access to funds. Technology can play an essential role for addressing these issues, and blockchain and telehealth have a massive role to play in breaking down existing barriers to affordable healthcare.
The framework of the medical profession as it stands is highly institutionalized. Strong economic barriers exist as its starting point, such as the training of healthcare providers. These barriers are then transferred further down the line, between patients and providers, as a knowledge gap and institutional divide is generated. The investment intrinsic to the study of medicine, whether it is funded by individuals or an institution, often requires investors to strive to recover the money put in to obtain the necessary qualifications. Inevitably, significant costs get handed down the line here and elsewhere in healthcare, as patients on the ground are swept along the economic wave that is generated through education, training, research, vaccine trials, and product development to name a few.
Across the globe there is stark inequality when it comes to accessing affordable healthcare. In many countries, vast rural areas remain physically unconnected to doctors. Individuals are forced to spend significant resources to travel in order to receive medical attention. In another vein, providers are able to drive up prices for their services due to high demand. How do we bring down prices across the healthcare profession and ensure that those most in need do not bear the brunt of these high financial costs? The internet has facilitated the rapid sharing of information in a way that has benefited people all over the world. Of course, access to more information does not mean that anyone can become a doctor by studying online. What it does mean however, is that people who may lack the basic knowledge of how to remain healthy or when to seek check-ups, for example, can now be educated in a way that wasn’t available to them until recently. Opening up these avenues of knowledge is the first step towards breaking down the barriers to affordable healthcare. In giving people access to information on basic pharmacology, sanitization, and human physiology, they are empowered to take the protection of their health into their own hands to an extent.
The next step is to consider how we can decrease costs across the board. Using blockchain technology, decentralized finance (DeFi) can facilitate the rapid sharing of funds across barriers, allowing for the flow of capital without friction, excessive costs, or necessary intermediaries. In the short term, DeFi can offer opportunities for the raising and sharing of capital, allowing for more funding to be distributed through philanthropic means. There is a strong global appetite to donate funds and assist with the deployment of effective healthcare, however barriers of international transfer often block the flow of capital. Take someone in the UK, for example, who wants to give money to a patient in the Philippines for a heart surgery – currently, there are multiple barriers to stop them from doing so. They would have to convert pounds into dollars in the first instance and then send the funds, which would then go through a series of checks as they cross various jurisdictions. In a crisis situation, doctors need to be able to make quick decisions – they need to know, can we access the funds for this surgery or not? In this example, by the time the money makes it to the patient, it could be too late. If we were able to utilize a system like DeFi, whereby approved funds can be sent instantly from various different locations across the world, the implications for healthcare would be monumental.
Long term, DeFi has the potential to facilitate lower interest loans and increase capital flows, which could help to bring down the cost of medical education and healthcare in general. Currently, the price of a surgery can differ hugely, depending on where you receive it. If a foot surgery in India costs $600 in Centre A and $1000 in Centre B, the patient would likely want to go to Centre A. Centre A may not facilitate the kind of payment you want to use however, especially in less developed areas – they may only take cash payments. In order to make the cheaper option available, we need to seamlessly link people through universally accessible payment systems. DeFi is the key to this.
What many people fail to realize is that blockchain already underpins many of the institutions that we rely on. In India, for example, a lot of banking processes use blockchain protocols. Nonetheless, many people are skeptical of blockchain as they associate it with the instability of some cryptocurrencies. Differentiating between crypto and blockchain will be essential as an education piece to bring further trust to the utilization of blockchain in healthcare. This is important because telemedicine can use blockchain to change the way we deliver and improve patient care. Centralized healthcare providers’ frustrations are caused by many different factors like consent, data management, and compliance with various processes. The utilization of blockchain makes the administrative, care delivery, and payment processes transparent, helping to reduce costs and free up doctors.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth consultations have experienced record growth globally, with the CDC recording a staggering 154% increase in telehealth visits during the last week of March 2020, compared with the same period the year before. In order to continue to spread the benefits of telemedicine, which helps to increase accessibility and funds, the blockchain community must aim to spread the message of its benefits. Tangible use cases, accessible language, and approachable professionals will be essential in promoting telemedicine and blockchain as effective tools for breaking down the barriers to affordable healthcare.
If we are to address the huge disparities in the quality and availability of healthcare across the world, we must look to technology. Blockchain and telehealth are already playing a massive role in reshaping how healthcare is administered. Currently, myself and a group of fellow doctors from across the world have been meeting virtually to identify potential technological solutions that can help ease the dire situation on the ground here in India. It is through conversations such as these that we can plan for the future and ensure that such technology will help us in any given health crisis. In order to continue this progress and increase affordability, accessibility, and knowledge worldwide, we must continue to develop and promote these incredible tools.
