Can Blockchain connect the dots for healthcare in Africa?

Africans account for over 90% of the world’s estimated 300 million to 500 million annual malaria cases, while the continent is home to 60% of the people living with HIV and AIDS – despite only accounting for 11% of the global population, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

It is telling indeed that, despite the pressing need for medical intervention, in densely populous economies in Africa such as Nigeria, the doctor-to-population remains far below global standards, estimated at a mere 0.3 to 1,000 by the WHO. 

It is not so much in the low doctor-to-population ratio that the issue lies, although it cannot be denied that Africa’s struggle with healthcare is exacerbated by the ‘brain drain’ of medical practitioners who leave home shores for higher wages in developed economies, better working conditions, as well as access to greater opportunities for breakthrough medical research. It may be noted that, on average, surgeons in New Jersey earn US$216,000 annually, while their counterparts in Zambia make US$24,000 while Kenyan doctors earn, on an average, US$6,000 per annum.

However, while the medical brain drain does impede accurate diagnosis and effective delivery due to the sheer volumes of patients queuing up at healthcare facilities, it is in the continent’s paper-based record-keeping system where much of the problem lies. By denying the ability to track medicines and charitable donations, fake medicines find their way into clinics and real, life-saving drugs are sold on the black market.

But there might be light at the end of this tunnel, with the proliferation of technology on the dynamic continent offering a never-before-seen opportunity to transform the healthcare landscape. In this context, it may be noted that Africa, where three-quarters of the population have a SIM connection, is experiencing a rapid development of ICT. Moreover, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where close to 10 percent of GDP in transactions occur through mobile money– this compares with just 7 percent of GDP in Asia and less than 2 percent of GDP in other regions.

This situation is uniquely geared to allow for the use of eHealth services in Africa for strengthening health systems and accelerating the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. In the African region, 24 countries have eHealth strategies and are exploring emerging technologies to help them realise their healthcare goals. According to the WHO global survey on eHealth (2015), mHealth is a huge trend in Africa while social media, telehealth and eLearning are also gaining currency.

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Against this backdrop of the myriad technologies that are finding home on the tech-savvy continent, blockchain is the one that holds maximum potential from a healthcare standpoint. In particular, with its capacity to facilitate secure information exchanges, blockchain can strengthen patient data security by providing a tamper-proof record of patient history while simultaneously providing an avenue for doctors to share information more easily. And it is data, with strong privacy and security, that will be the catalyst for a utopian future which would be predicated on reliable medical records and the possibility of anonymous healthcare delivery to avoid the societal stigma that often acts as a deterrent for visiting doctors and seeking treatment.

On this note, we bring to you the top three blockchain-powered initiatives that promise to change the landscape of healthcare delivery in Africa:

Longenesis: Building a healthcare data economy

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With data becoming the new oil, African nations face an unprecedented opportunity to attract organisations to deliver healthcare to their citizens, while turning their economies into healthcare data hubs that can make breakthroughs in medical research. 

Pioneering the monetisation of healthcare data for Africa’s vast population is Longenesis, a partnership between Insilico Medicine, a leading artificial intelligence company that uses deep learning for drug discovery, and the Bitfury Group, a leading full-service blockchain technology company. The app seeks to help Africans ‘monetise their data, live longer lives, as well as build the economy.’

Longenesis has developed a blockchain platform that uses AI-integrated toolsets to store and exchange healthcare-related data such as lab test results and has already launched the platform in alpha and piloted it for over a year. The main goal of the company is to accelerate the development of the health care by providing the solutions (for pharma, clinics, researchers, data analytics companies, and patients) for data management and data analytics utilising blockchain and AI technologies.

Kinect Hub: Tracking the healthcare supply chain 

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Kinect Hub is a digital healthcare system aimed at developing countries such as nations in Africa. It provides a platform for trusted transactions, in order to clamp down on corruption and assist the developing world with improving health and well-being.

By using blockchain technology in healthcare, it can track the medicine supply chain, personal medical records and donations to avoid both corruption eating into donations as well as loss of vital patient information in availing healthcare delivery. The innate capacity of blockchain for security and privacy makes it an ideal fit for tracking the entire healthcare supply chain. 

Kinect Hub also incentivises patients to attend health appointments by paying them through its Kinect Now reward system. Financed through selling anonymised and aggregated patient data to pharmaceutical companies, the digital healthcare platform pays patients just to turn up for their appointments, ensuring that they receive critical medical intervention when it is needed the most. Moreover, apart from avoiding wasted costs, this is expected to act as a shot in the arm for the pharmaceutical industry which is currently impeded in research and development efforts in emerging markets by lack of access to real-time information. 

CareAi: AI Doctor supplying anonymously medical treatment

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Imagine an AI-powered computing system anchored on blockchain that can diagnose infectious diseases, such as malaria, typhoid fever, and tuberculosis, within seconds! Now imagine that this system delivers treatments anonymously, so that patients do not face societal stigma if they are diagnosed with ‘third world’ diseases such as malaria, typhoid and tuberculosis. Sounds too good to be true? What’s even better is that this solution actually exists!

By bringing AI and blockchain together, CareAi uses an anonymous distributed healthcare architecture to deliver health services to patients anonymously. This makes it possible for migrant populations to access basic healthcare without compromising their identities, for fear of deportation. All CareAi needs is a finger prick of blood deposited on a lab-on-a-chip. The chip is then inserted into the machine which proceeds with the patient’s diagnosis by correlating that data with libraries of academic data/journals anonymously. 

All the anonymised data is securely stored on the blockchain, which supports smart contracts, making it possible to manage the rights, permission, and access to the health data. Participating organisations use Distributed App (an interface to blockchain contract) to access the anonymised data through smart contracts. Governments and enterprises buy tokens with which to use the app. These tokens are then used to pay the healthcare NGOs and support the servicing of the machines. In exchange, these paying entities have access to medical insights that can help them better inform and plan healthcare research, funding, and policy.

A European Commission project, which is funded by the EU, the creators of CareAi are currently targeting refugee camps in Europe but the next line of sight is to extend the solution to Africa. 

Building blockchain health hubs

With breakthrough, blockchain projects such as Longenesis, Kinect Hub and CareAi shaping the future of eHealth in Africa, it is clear that the healthcare landscape in Africa is set for an exciting transformation. 

To realise this future, it is important that the public and private sector join hands to ensure that the funding and technology required for these critical medical initiatives can be scaled up and replicated successfully across the diverse continent and its multiple economies.