Ep. 7: Unleashing the Value of Healthcare Data - Katherine Kuzmeskas (CEO SimplyVital Health)

We discuss the origins of SV Health and the challenges she faces bringing new technology into the slow-moving healthcare industry. Their featured platform HealthNexus is a globally HIPAA compatible protocol and forked from the ethereum blockchain. Kat is Health Unchained’s first female guest and I would certainly encourage other women entrepreneurs to get involved with building these new types of distributed business models in healthcare. SimplyVital Health is hiring. Check out the show notes for more details about the episode and a few cool links related to the show. Show Notes Teach for America experience at the Texas/Mexico border Teaching nutrition and diabetes management as a 7th grade teacher Changing career paths Incorporating SimplyVital Health in Delaware SV Health is equity backed by multiple Venture Capitalists Receipt hash function creates an audit trail to track the interaction of the providers with the each other and the patient to prove care coordination. Creating a healthcare safe blockchain protocol Open-source key pair system foundation Why did you fork the ethereum blockchain? Two reasons: Proof-of-traction is needed in healthcare and there are more developers with ethereum based coding skills Creating the permissioned blockchain to comply with HIPAA and attract healthcare institutions Opportunity in Clinical trials research needs better data access just like the rest of healthcare Regulatory challenges in the blockchain space and difficulty understanding the value of tokens Blockchain bad actors and maintaining your integrity What has your experience been like as a woman CEO and do you think there have been any disadvantages or advantages being a woman in this field? What advice would you give to women who may be interested in this new field of architecting trust with technology? Existing products and traction with users/developers Patient data is super valuable, case in point, Henrietta Lacks cell lines (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/5-ways-henrietta-lacks-changed-medical-science/New Hampshire). Dangers of selling data as your business model (https://hbr.org/2017/06/to-survive-health-care-data-providers-need-to-stop-selling-data) Ontario experimenting with open access to residents’ healthcare data (https://qz.com/1246042/ontario-is-releasing-its-residents-personal-health-data-to-eager-tech-companies/) Data producers, analyzers, and quality control. Creating a marketplace for patients to share data with pharmaceutical companies. Entrepreneurship fundamentals are still critical to be successful with blockchain technology. Decision to use telegram only as an announcement channel. If it’s not too personal, what would you consider to be your biggest mistake? Embracing failure to grow stronger with experience. Lack of good healthcare data access is a business issue not a technology issue. Health Information Exchanges don’t work because of lack of trust and business. News Corner: SimplyVital Health, the Boston-based blockchain healthcare company has joined with The Cool Kids to bring SimplyVital's open source Key Pair System to identify the highest healthcare impact opportunity in the Philippines. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/filipino-company-picks-health-nexus-blockchain-protocol-to-fix-healthcare-nationwide-300666767.html Links: https://www.simplyvitalhealth.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherinekuzmeskas/ https://gitter.im/ https://github.com/Health-Nexus