Apply HN and Feedback: Kaleidoscope Corp (Centralizing Health Database)

Healthcare is one of the last big industries that hasn't been revolutionised yet. That said the issue of medical data storage and sharing is a very big one and hits a very sensitive nerve on the general public. What you are describing is more or less an everyday reality for anyone who had some recent experience with healthcare either as a patient or a health professional.

As it was noted there were and currently are some major tech companies who tried to tackle this problem unsuccessfully up until now; the fact that they haven't managed to offer a viable solution yet speaks for itself. If you believe you have the knowledge and experience to work on something that truly is a very complex problem to solve you should prepare for a battle. There are literally hundreds of closed proprietary systems for medical record keeping only in the US. They have established marketing channels and collaborations and in fact are so deeply rooted to the workings of a hospital that feels like you would have to physically tear down and rebuild the whole thing from scratch! As we speak there are also some great cloud based alternatives with a different approach and business model (eg patient fusion).

On the other hand what you are describing is the future; some of the most important healthcare evangelists are pointing out that our fixation on the preservation of health data in these closed systems is costing us both in money and quality of services received. My opinion is it will happen once the general public embraces the idea of sharing (anonymised) personal health information which in turn will only happen when we realise that the benefit of such outweighs the possible risks of exposure of this information to a third party.

Totally agree with your first comment. We have talked to a lot of people ranging from young to old about this issue and we got a various amount of response from, "didn't know it was a problem" to "how safe can this be" to "why can't people build this awhile ago when I needed it."

Those major tech companies cannot solve this problem because they built their foundation completely wrong when tackling the electronic health record software. People like Jonathan Bush, CEO from athneaHealth, explained that the current health system needs to be wiped clean and to be start over. In some cases, big companies are trying to merge in order to solve this issue and to hope one company can rule them all. Having companies establishing channels and collaborations with hospitals is not something we fear about. What we fear most is the lack of options health record companies are not telling health care professionals about. There are better solutions out there to build a better health system. We have looked into a couple cloud based health record companies and we are hoping to work with them someday since we will feel they are on the right path on what we want to achieve as well. (patient Fusion is one of them)

That is why we want to build on this for the future. You are totally on the right track about everything you said in the last paragraph. Building this database will take time; therefore, we want to be there when the public is ready for it. This health database is just the tip of the iceberg. We already planned a path for it and how it can benefit the future as well as how it can change the way the health industry works.

Thank you for your comments and thoughts. If you have more questions or comments or anything, feel free to ask/comment. I would be happy to reply to your thoughts.

Your diving headlong into an incredibly sticky issue. This is one of the core fears the public has been chewing on a long time... that the sharing of medical information would become so streamlined that nearly minimal effort would be required to profile an individual.

I do understand how hard this task is since there are plenty of rules and regulations that has to be checked. However, the process does need to change regarding to how health data is dealt with. Currently, we are still applying the same knowledge from the 90s about containing health data as if they were still in vanilla folders stored on top of a shelf. The same mindset has already cost the US $33 million dollars trying to patch a broken foundation in the health data industry. As of today, multiple hospitals already have been hacked because the lack of knowledge healthcare professionals have about the digital world. Sure, there are plenty of red tapes around this issue; however, our idea isn't to cut those tapes down but to assist the health industry to move into the digital realm without changing their production in the health field.

As for the second part of your comment, I was wondering if you can explain that more since I'm a bit confused. I got lost about the "one of the core fears the public has" to "sharing of medical information would become so streamlined." I don't know if you are saying if a centralized health database is a bad thing or not.

Some huge companies are working on this issue. How would you deal with a country like Canada that socialized medical and the systems are more government run.

Agreed, some huge companies are working on this issue. But to also point out, these huge companies have been working on since 2010. In addition, those companies are spending majority of their revenue on data storage and data security instead of better healthcare for patients or better facilities for physicians to operate in. What I can tell you is these companies won't play fair with each other since they all feel the need to protect their software platform on obtaining a patient's data. What makes our company different than those health record companies is the fact that we realize the end product will always be the same no matter what platform the doctor uses.

Our goal is to be like VISA credit card. Any type of bank or credit card company can use the VISA credit card and apply their own benefits on it; but we are third neutral party in charge of the data.

Countries like Canada, Germany, etc. with universal healthcare still have the same problem regarding data storage, data security, and data accessibility. If a patient from Canada ends up traveling to another country, he or she still have to face the same problem where their medical record won't be on them while traveling. Vise versa, if a patient enters Canada, he or she will also see the same problem. We want to link everything together. Sure it will take time because of politics issue, but we do believe that we are all one race. Bacteria and viruses do not care where you are or who you are, so why should we create boundaries and walls for our health data if it can help our life and save others' lives.

Hopefully I have addressed your issue. If not, please continue.

I think you answered it but I have another if you would indulge me. So when big companies dominate the sector you usually have to find a small slice to force the wedge in because they usually control the relationships. Do you see this as a slice to do that?

We do believe entering the health industry as a database company can be the slice we need. We feel this database is the snowball we need to get things rolling. As mentioned by another reader, big companies are spending tons of money on data storage that it is costing the public money and wasting a lot health facility money that be used elsewhere. There are plenty of big companies controlling this health sector; however, they are slower to adapt to situations since they never started off as a data company but as a software company(SaaS). With our goals in mind, we do believe this can be a huge turning point not just in the health industry, but also how people interact with health.

Hopefully I answered your questions. Please feel free to ask more or comment more. It helps us understand how everyone feels about this project.

Look at all these companies. There's 20+ companies working on this problem.

HumanAPI

GetMedal

BloomAPI

UsePrime

RecordCollect

ZweenaHealth

Doctrly

Carebox

GorillaBox

NuskiHealth

PicnicHealth

If you need my help, feel free to reach out.

Thanks for the list of companies. Some of the companies we looked into are either dead or does not exist anymore. Some companies like GetMedal, BloomAPI, and Doctrly have been on our radar as well.

There is a difference between us and the list of companies listed here. I would love to talk more with you if you want. The more help we find, the better of a product we can make based on the people's perspective.

Shoot me an email kumarovski@gmail.com :)

Looking forward to connecting. This is a tough space. :)

http://www.engineersf.com/2016/04/17/a-list-of-the-technolog...