VANCOUVER, British Columbia–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Blockchain technology company Verida joins forces with CareProtocol to launch IKIGAI Network, a decentralized OpenHealth ecosystem.
The IKIGAI Network is pioneering the OpenHealth movement by building the world’s first global decentralized healthcare ecosystem built on principles of open data and open source development. This new information infrastructure for healthcare will allow anyone to synchronize health data with a network of physicians, individuals, entrepreneurs, and institutions. With a more accessible, efficient, and smarter health information management system not siloed by any one institution, IKIGAI will enable a thriving ecosystem for patients and clinicians around the world.
Unlocking personal health data allows patients to benefit from their health data in new, innovative ways and provides timely access to data for better clinical outcomes. Artificial intelligence will be leveraged to consensually run on individuals’ health data to provide hyper-personalized, proactive healthcare recommendations and unlock large real-time health datasets for medical researchers.
Verida is a software company that leads the development of self-sovereign data technologies for individuals and enterprises, founded by Chris Were, former CEO and co-founder of Australian technology company Community Data Solutions. With 20+ years of experience in software solutions, Chris started Verida as a research project in 2018, with the mission of helping people own and control their data. “We created an open-source library that enables decentralized applications to be built where users can own, control, and store their data using private encryption keys,” says Were.
CareProtocol is an AI health start-up founded by two physicians, Dr. Roger Ng and Dr. Ray Ng, who hold 20+ years of cumulative practice experience, and two technology entrepreneurs and proven investors, Marc van der Chijs and Sean Clark. Dr. Ray Ng believes “the joint partnership is a natural fit for these two organizations to join forces to launch IKIGAI, as both teams share the goal of improving the state of healthcare, empowering both physicians and patients.”
According to Sean Clark, CEO of IKIGAI, “the healthcare industry is the largest economic sector in developed economies, representing nearly $4 trillion in the U.S. alone. With the emergence of COVID-19 driving growth in telehealth services, the rise of decentralized currencies, and a growing mistrust of centralized systems amidst a global pandemic, the time is right for decentralized healthcare.”
Members of the IKIGAI Network will be able to access a diverse range of OpenHealth services built on top of an open-source framework delivering the world’s first decentralized App Store (dApp Store) for healthcare. dApps available at launch will include HealthOS by Care Protocol, Decentralized EMR and COVID19 Credentials by Verida, and the IKIGAI Vault, which enriches the health experience by allowing patients to own, control and consensually share their personal health data with experts around the world. For early access to IKIGAI, visit www.ikigainetwork.com.
About IKIGAI Network
IKIGAI Network is an incentivized OpenHealth ecosystem that enables a shared global collection of individual-owned and managed medical information. IKIGAI’s decentralized framework allows personalized health information to be encrypted on any device, anywhere in the world in a secure, HIPAA compliant fashion under the complete ownership of the patient unlocking new use cases and value propositions.
About CareProtocol
CareProtocol (formerly Nth Opinion Technologies) is an AI healthtech start-up founded in 2018 by two medical doctors. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team created AskCo19, an end-to-end AI solution with a real-time outcome-driven, multimodality system to assist frontline physicians. CareProtocol is developing a new HealthOS (health operating system) equipped with a full suite of tools providing every practitioner with a virtual clinic, AI-powered clinical assistant, a secure telehealth application, a payment solution, and a blockchain-based electronic medical records system that allows patients to own their own data.
About Verida
Verida began as a research project in 2018, with the mission of helping people own and control their data. The team creates architecture for decentralized data ownership and control combining the best of traditional database technologies and decentralized identity standards. This work resulted in the release of the Verida testnet in 2020, providing an open source library for developers to easily build interoperable self-sovereign dApps where users own, control, and store their data using private encryption keys anchored by public blockchain.