It’s no secret that blockchain is taking the world by storm and making people billions. However, that money isn’t just from financial instruments like Bitcoin and Ripple, futuristic tech-facing coins like IOTA, and, yes, even scams. No, crypto technology and blockchain has the potential to make existing industries more efficient, giving every consumer and investor something to cheer about.

The Iris Network blockchain tech fits this role perfectly. Aiming at revolutionizing the way providers and patients deal with health data Electronic Health Records (EHR’s), the Iris team hopes to bring the miracle of instantly accessible and efficient data to a sector that can be plagued by inefficiency, data insecurity, and poor access. Could this save us all on insurance costs and even price of care? The payoff might be closer than you think.

The Iris Network

The Iris Network seeks to move healthcare data into a new era of accountability and security. Utilizing blockchain technology, Iris allows providers, patients, and researchers to upload data to its blockchain network. Each participant then has access to a globally-available, time-stamped, secure store of data. How does this save us money? It lies with the current weakness of EHR’s.

The current technology of Existing Health Records (EHR’s), the system for storing and sharing medical data, costs healthcare providers and consumers money. Stored in old, disparate modes of data, when individuals switch healthcare systems, or even when providers themselves choose to modernize, different systems can often have difficulty transferring health histories of consumers.

Data must be painstakingly transferred or re-uploaded. Healthcare workers, untrained in data entry, are forced to spend vital time inputting imperfect data across systems. Sometimes, data can be lost entirely. This lack of interoperability between systems costs time, money, and perhaps even lives.

Iris EHR

Iris could be a crypto that could symbiotically enriching an industry while helping its customers along the way. The revolutionary aspect of Iris is to take the blockchain technology and apply it this flaws system of of health record management. Based on the globally-active and secure Ethereum Network, the Iris blockchain network works like any other blockchain technology.

Creating a continually-growing list of digital records through cryptography, these “blocks” are then distributed into decentralized networks, which any authorized user can access with proper verification. While most uses for this high tech has been purely unhackable financial instruments like Bitcoin, the application of  a secure, instant network could permanently transform global healthcare.

Imagine your medical history no longer being stored on Windows 7 in the basement of a hospital, but being stored as an unbreakable computer algorithm distributed across the globe. Or perhaps imagine two surgeons in California and Mexico City, seamlessly updating each other on a shared patient. For patients, Iris can only help.

However, the real savings, and the opportunity for investment, are in how Iris could save the healthcare industry billions through the Iris Ecosystem. Those who upload healthcare data- patients and authorized healthcare providers- would receive an Iris Token. This Token would act like any other cryptocurrency and be exchanged on open exchanges. The value of these Tokens, however, is incalculable.

Those who purchase tokens would be able to access the network of billions of gigabytes of aggregated, anonymous health data. Insurance providers, pharmaceutical companies, and private research institutions could have access to the global health landscape instantly.

The ability to recalculate rates and premiums in real time could bring down insurance for the 99%. Researchers, once limited to voluntary surveys and old data, would be able to access all the knowledge they need to improve medicine for everybody.

This Iris Ecosystem gives miners access to the most efficient and safe version of healthcare records possible and could reduce billions of dollars of overhead from archaic forms of data storage, bringing down prices for consumers and reducing prices of treatments for all. More importantly, by accelerating research, Iris could save an untold amount of lives.

Why It Matters

The American healthcare industry is wasteful, spending by far the most on healthcare among OECD Nations. This disproportionate expense is the result of inefficiencies not only in how Americans pay and provide healthcare, but in the infrastructure of the system itself.

While cryptocurrencies will undoubtedly continue their mission to decentralize and anonymize currency, those same principles can continue to be applied to other sectors. The Iris blockchain network is not only a revolution for the healthcare industry, but a way to bring healthcare into the era of Big Data.Opinions expressed here by Contributors are their own.
