Cryptocurrencies in Healthcare: Are Healthcare Coins the Future?
Introduction
What if you could get paid just to engage in healthy activities? Yes, you read that right. Imagine a platform that reward you with healthcare cryptocurrencies to exercise, attend gym sessions, to share your medical data with researchers, or to take total control of your health records.
This is the idea behind the introduction of health-based cryptocurrencies.
By nature, humans are wired to be lazy. Our bodies are built to conserve as much energy as possible. You don’t agree? In 2015, a group of researchers reported that the human body finds the best possible way to conserve energy even when it moves. This fact is likely one of the major reasons why incorporating fitness activities into daily routines is so difficult for so many people.
Money is an excellent motivator though. Thus, digital health companies and researchers believe monetizing healthy habits can motivate people to engage in exercise, stay sober, and regularly take their medication. The earned rewards can be used as payment for coaching, medication, hospital bills, or even workout gear.
Certain digital companies utilize cryptocurrency as bait to encourage patients to willingly share their data for medical research purposes.
In one of our previous posts, we stated that the healthcare sector is inundated with data. This data holds the key to unlocking new levels of treatments and medications that can keep our world healthy for a long time; the implementation of novel AI-based innovations relies heavily on our ever-growing glut of information.
As the health sector moves towards technology that will make the physician’s work more efficient, there is evidence that points to the combination of AI, blockchain, and cryptocurrency being the magic ingredients. In this article, we will discuss the role of cryptocurrencies.
What Exactly is Healthcare Cryptocurrency?
By now, terms like bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency are not completely unfamiliar to you. Cryptocurrency is money that lives on software platforms. Often referred to as tokens or virtual cash, it may become the currency of the future. As of January, 2021, there are more than 8,360 cryptocurrencies in the world with a total market capitalization of over $1 trillion with Bitcoin reaching an all time high of over $600 billion in January, 2021. Bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, Stellar, and NEO are the most popular types.
There are over 8,360 cryptocurrencies in the world with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion, increasing daily due to recent market surge.
CoinMarketCap, 2021
Cryptocurrencies are industry-specific. This is because they are linked to sectors of the economy like healthcare, education, banking, finance, and many more. At the time of the writing of this article, there are over 23 different healthcare coins (health-based cryptocurrencies) traded in the world. These include but are not limited to SOLVE, Stem Cell Coin, MediBloc, doc.com token, Medishares, FarmaTrust, Lympho, HumanScape, and AI Doctor.
Unlike legal tenders used for daily transactions, tokens/cryptocurrencies are not backed by any government. They do, however, offer one of the most firmly secured methods of monetizing items and sharing them with those in need. Their transfer is fast and they can be accessed anywhere in the world as long as you have a good internet connection and are capable of using a virtual wallet.
How Do Healthcare Coins Work?
The adoption and use of cryptocurrency in sensitive sectors like healthcare shows just how valuable this currency can become. Utilizing decentralized technology that is run by a network of participants, it is not overseen by a central authority. This means patients will be in complete charge of their data; they may choose to do what they want with it. Following is a description of the first five highly traded healthcare coins in the world and how they are used:
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Five leading Healthcare Cryptocurrencies Ideas that Can Change the Face of Medical Practice
1. SOLVE
SOLVE token is a product of solve.care, a decentralized platform built on blockchain technology. It is designed to facilitate the coordination and administration of healthcare. It also focuses on making payments around the world and boasts a wide range of applications that cover businesses (B2B), government (B2G), stakeholders, consumers (B2C), and developers (B2D).
While allowing physicians and patient families to manage a patient’s healthcare, it creates room for governments to administer services to various population groups and allows clinical companies and administrators to sponsor care administration. SOLVE.care plays a key role in reducing costs by minimizing risks of abuse, fraud, duplication, and waste.
Solve is ranked at #346 with 1 Solve exchanging at $0.09567 and a market cap of $35 million.
Recently, the company launched a sister program known as team.care. Team.care assists employers in keeping an active eye on the overall welfare of their workforce as the world adjusts to the new normal of working from home and coping with COVID-19.
2. Stem Cell Coin
This coin was created to address the necessity for easier access to qualitative healthcare worldwide. It was aimed at achieving two important objectives:
- To develop and popularize a means of payment for the cost of stem cell treatment at affiliate hospitals, and
- To develop and popularize pathological/diagnostic imaging systems via the utilization of AI and blockchain.
The company has created a virtual clinic platform that boosts research and clinical work therapeutic formulations involving stem cells.
Stem Cell coin is ranked at #377 with a coin exchanging at $0.09563 with a market cap of over $30 million.
3. MediBloc
Medibloc is focused on building a patient-centric healthcare data solution that makes everyone’s life healthier. With their innovation, the patient exercises full authority over their data and may choose to share it with whoever they choose. The company hopes to transform the already highly inundated healthcare sector with excellent data flow in a secured and structured manner.
MediBloc offers three important services: Medipass, Dr.Palette, and Panacea.
While Medipass is a mobile-based application (available on Android and iOS platforms) that allows patients to control their hospital records for insurance claims, Dr. Palette is a quick and efficient Electronic Management Record system (EMR) that optimizes the organization and management of patient data. Panacea is a blockchain-based platform optimized for protecting the privacy and reliability of said sensitive information.
MediBloc is ranked at #531 and exchanges at $0.004861 per coin with a market cap of over $13 million.
4. MediShares
MediShares is an ethereum-based, open-source, and decentralized mutual insurance platform that provides all the necessary tools required by users and creators to enter into a mutual aid contract. It offers important advances. The technology can lock insured tokens into a smart contract, reduce the operational cost of engaging insurance companies, and facilitate global participation.
Medishare is ranked at #897 and exchanges for $0.002967 with a market cap of over $3 million.
MediShares makes navigating health insurance easy for all parties and offers quick responses when necessary.
5. Doc.com Token
Doc.com token is a means to interact with the blockchain-enabled platform built by Docademic. This healthcare coin/token creates pathways in which interested parties can exchange valuable data for tokens that are then used to acquire products or services.
The Medical Token Currency (MTC) created by doc.com token is one of the few cryptocurrencies that pay people to take care of their health. It also grants patients access to the life-chain care platforms currently under development by doc.com.
Doc.com is ranked at #1031 and exchanges at $0.003076 per token with a market cap of over $2 million.
As mentioned in the introduction of this article, this serves as motivation to stay healthy and encourages users to share their data with certified third parties for research purposes.
The Future of Healthcare Cryptocurrencies
The healthcare sector is fertile ground for innovation. Every aspect of healthcare is evolving to be more accessible and effective. Better technology means less human intervention and thus, less human error. As you can see, while AI-based techniques streamline disease diagnoses and treatment, they also currently remove some of the difficulty involved in data protection, data sharing, and insurance navigation.
The present healthcare system is highly centralized, so access to qualitative data for both research and clinical purposes is limited. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are already working on breaking this barrier and making information more readily available. Although this may predispose the patient to some disadvantages, the efficacy of these innovations is undeniable.
So yes, if the indications are correct, AI and blockchain technology is the future of medicine.
Their combination should unlock a whole new level of effective medicine that we have never seen before.
Using healthcare cryptocurrencies backed by a blockchain-based, decentralized information-sharing system backed by cryptocurrencies, patients are encouraged to share their data with experts. They are also incentivized to engage in physical activities. As the technology and its adoption grows, we can expect medicine to get more efficient, and humans, on the whole, will become healthier.
If you haven’t already, please feel free to read our articles about how AI and blockchain are transforming healthcare and how cryptocurrencies can help you live a healthier life.
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