Tech-unicorns of Healthcare

How Blockchain Marketplaces will Reshape the Industry

A few decades ago marketplaces and the Internet were the buzzwords as bitcoin and blockchain are today. Nobody thought they would last long, but they did.

Actually digital platforms like eBay or Amazon didn’t simply survive — they fundamentally changed and disrupted traditional notions of trade, surpassing old-fashioned offline rivals and giving an impetus to the cyber revolution. In 2018 marketplaces are no longer insurgents, but dominants occupying the significant shares: Amazon has 43% in the US retail, and Uber — 77% in the US ride hailing market. The business model of giant online platforms has transformed a lot of fields, but so far no hi-tech marketplace or startup has managed to revive healthcare. Or not?

The master key

The pioneers that created and implemented the marketplace model into the real business were the today’s giants of retail: eBay and Amazon. In 1995 they hardly realized that their innovative approach would radically change the way the seller and the buyer interact with each other and lead to a real shakeout in the retail industry. The unique business concept powered by the use of digital technologies turned ordinary online shopping into extraordinary business. Just a few years later, both companies hit success and transformed into major B2C trading platforms: in 1997 Amazon issued its stocks on NASDAQ and their price became sky high on the first day of trade, exceeding $53, while eBay hosted over 2,000,000 auctions.

Gradually, other industries followed the lead and attained their unicorn status: Airbnb, Uber. The marketplace has become a synonym for success. Digital platforms have gained their momentum, erasing geographical boundaries and giving a new spin on the traditional industries. With marketplaces everything seemed to be unattainable became easily accessible. You can book a flight and a hotel even lying on a couch and having little money on Airbnb, or order anything you desire on Amazon literally in one click.

The marketplace boom has already captured retail, transportation, tourism and other industries. Now it’s time to disrupt the most sensitive sphere — the one that’s broken with challenges and bureaucracy: healthcare.

Breaking a vicious cycle

With more than 7 billion people on Earth at least half the world’s population lacks access to basic health services according to a recent WHO report. Moreover, every year the prices of medical treatment continue to skyrocket. In particular, in the US, the average annual costs per person hit $10,345 in 2016 and are expected to surpass $14,944 in 2023. Meanwhile, almost 100 million people worldwide are pushed into poverty because of out-of-pocket health expenses.

Today’s healthcare needs a new twist to restore the balance and grant every person the fundamental right to have access to medical treatment. And that twist involves marketplaces. This business model has proved its effectiveness many times, and in the field of health, it is also doomed to win.

“If you can connect a seller and a buyer on eBay, a driver and a passenger on Uber, then why can’t you do the same, only with a doctor and a patient? Or go even further: give a patient access to first-class healthcare 24/7 in his own language? With today’s technologies it’s possible” — said Ildar Fazulyanov, who in 2015 started his Airbnb of healthcare, a global blockchain-based marketplace WELL.

Focus on blockchain

The whole world has already gone into digital reality, and healthcare industry is no exception. First of all it concerns the use of telemedicine, when a doctor can connect with a patient via devices: PC, phone, tablet or even IoT wearables. It doesn’t matter where both sides are physically located, they can interact over the Internet, even being on different continents.

According to the BBC Research report, by 2018 the telemedicine services market will be worth $44 billion. By 2025 that figure could go higher to $113 billion. Despite such a positive forecast, many modern telemedicine marketplaces have come across issues related to quality control, privacy, medical data security and convenient payments. Most companies are not able to solve these problems because they are centralized. The future of all marketplaces, including healthcare ones, is the integration of state-of-the-art blockchain technology, whose primary features are decentralization, speed, and transparency.

Though blockchain is already being implemented to healthcare practices by such large corporations as IBM, most solutions are connected with data storage. The idea of a telemed marketplace enabled by distributed ledger technology is still new, but highly promising. WELL project is among the first to create a global blockchain-based platform for online appointments and has already been noticed by healthcare providers, venture capital companies, patients, and community.

Unlike existing telehealth projects, marketplaces powered by this technology solve the problems of cross-border payments, non-payments or low-quality services, and are able to ensure reliable protection of patients’ data.

The basis of all online aggregators is money flow. In healthcare, the payments’ issue has become the genuine concern due to high risks of delayed or canceled payments, especially when it comes to cross-border ones. With blockchain there is no need to worry about that as cryptocurrency transactions are fast, easy and secure.

Another headache for all marketplaces is security of personal data. While in the fields like retail or transportation the data mostly refers to the bank account, home address or email, in healthcare the patients’ records include much more vulnerable information — DNA, blood type, suffered illnesses, allergies.

Medical information is so sensitive that it requires the best means to secure it. No patient wants his own data to be lost, hacked or passed to a 3rd party without his permission. In case of a traditional marketplace, where information is stored in centralized databases, such things may happen. However, with blockchain, data is encrypted and only the owner can access it with individual keys. Thanks to distributed technologies, medical records are reliably stored in a decentralized way, thus no one can change, delete or falsify them. What’s more, patients are those in full control of their records and only they can decide what they’d like to share with his doctor.

As marketplaces encompass interaction between people, they may run into problems related to unfair reviews, violation of obligations or claims about low-quality services. Again blockchain technology helps to overcome these risks thanks to its algorithms. For instance, WELL is enabled by the blockchain algorithm, monitoring whether the parties have fulfilled their obligations, and creates a fair rating system based on that.

Catch the unicorn

In 1995 two people founded eBay and Amazon marketplaces, starting an online revolution in retail. In the next twenty years, they were followed by hundreds of companies around the globe that disrupted the spheres of taxi services, tourism, accommodation, recruiting and many others.

However, while it took 20 years for the Internet to transform the economy with marketplaces, today’s digital revolution is lightning-fast indeed. Though the widespread implementation of blockchain is likely a few years away, it’s always better to stay on the cutting edge of technologies and be the first to take advantage of them — like WELL does. Powered by the best telemed solutions and blockchain, this healthcare marketplace is much ahead of time delivering first-class medical aid to any person anytime and anywhere.

For more information, visit :

author : bin.murtadho

Bitcointalk Profile