 Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Hyperledger Foundation Health Care Special Interest Group general meeting. Today is July 20th. We'll be as usual discussing some of the industry developments and updates before we get started just as a reminder. The members of this group have access to this agenda. Actually, it's a public agenda, but we also have it available on our YouTube channel, too. So if you'd like to check that out on your own time when if you cannot attend one of these meetings, you can go ahead and do that as well. So I'm looking at the participants list today. I don't think I see anybody relatively new here. So I'll just ask, is there anyone who wants to introduce themselves to the group? Okay. And again, you can read the Hyperledger Antitrust Policy here in the link in the agenda. This is recorded as a reminder. So anything you say is basically public domain. So does anyone have any community announcements to share with the group here today? All right. Not a problem. As a reminder here, there are multiple communities and groups in the healthcare and blockchain space. Here's just a list of some groups you can join via Telegram and Discord. And I think there's plenty more. So if you do find that there are specific communities you think we should share here, let me know, and I can add it here into the agenda as well. So there are a bunch of events coming up late summer and to fall. So I just want to go over some of these with you. July 17 in San Diego, there's an AHA. Actually, this just happened. So this, I don't know if anyone here has attended, but this just did occur. So we won't go into it too much. There's an event in August 29 to the 31st in Stanford, the Science of Blockchain. September 12, the Hyperledger Global Forum will take place in Dublin, Ireland. So this is an annual event that Hyperledger facilitates. And there are a number of different healthcare related events there as well. So just quickly want to go through some of these. There's a Health 3.0 panel, a discussion on how a DeFi-enabled tokenized data economy will reinvent healthcare and put patients first. So this is actually a presentation by Heather Flannery from Acudium Health. Additionally, there's a demo on pharma supply chain resilience with blockchain. So that's happening as well with the VP of digital and data solutions at Zooling pharma. And finally, there's a panel discussion for best practices from leading healthcare and life sciences blockchain production deployments and advanced research investigations. So this one is really interesting, I'm excited for. I actually spoke to Kyle Culver from Humana yesterday about the synaptic health alliance for a podcast episode, which we'll get released in the future. But everyone here has been working on this industry for quite some time. So I think it'll be a very interesting conversation because some of the struggle with this space is how do we actually take this tech and processes into deployment, into production. So this will be an interesting conversation, I think. There's also the converge to X events that'll take place in Austin, Texas. This is an event led by this group here. So yep, September 15th, you can register now as well. In Boston, there'll be a D side decentralized science event September 23rd and 24th. Check that out if you're interested in the D side space. You have some pretty good sponsors, including Vita Dow, Molecule, Labdow. Most of these companies are working heavily with the big pharma industry. And there's the major event in Las Vegas, the health conference, multi-day event, touches upon digital health and many other things. So I'm sure there's some blockchain related events in here I haven't checked yet, but just a ton of content and presentations here. So with that, I'll just open up the floor. If anyone has a specific event they're going to, I would like to share with the group. I'll just pause for a minute here. Hello, everyone. Good to see you. This is Wendy. So for the government blockchain healthcare working group, there's a roundtable tomorrow. I was recruited to speak because the planned speaker dropped out. And so I'll be talking tomorrow about data as an asset. And Doug, you had asked me before for how data are valued and sold and what are current averages for data, data ranges for sales. I will be talking about all of that tomorrow. So please do join the roundtable. It's the goal is for it to be a discussion. And I will be shedding as much light as I can on the nuances, because I definitely don't have the answers, but I can ask some really hard questions. Awesome. Thank you, Wendy. Could you, could you put that information in the chat please? I certainly can. Thank you for asking that. Oh, and I also will be, for those of you who asked for a recording of my presentation to the Drug Information Association, there was no reporting for that, but I'll be talking about a lot of the same materials. So you won't, if you attend tomorrow, you won't have missed much from the Drug Information Association presentation. The only thing that would be different is that for a DIA, I was joined by an amazing physician researcher who would not be joining me tomorrow. So is this an open event, or is it something we have did? It sure is. It's open to the public. Okay. So you'll put a link in the chat? Yes, I will. And it's a member. And so that's why equidium speakers have been recently. So just everyone is welcome. Anyone is also welcome to attend. Thanks, Wendy. Thanks for sharing that. Anybody else have any events they would like to share before I move on? All right. So a few articles and announcements I've seen over the last couple weeks. There's a lot more. I'm sure that I did not include. So if you do find that there is something you would like to share, let us know. Put it in the chat. We can pull it up on the screen and talk about it. I did see a lot of movement in the markets as well in the crypto space. So I'll just start here with this article from Global Health Journal, discussing the metaverse token economics and chronic disease. And it's right here. So this is fully available, this entire article, I believe. So you can download it and read it. They talk about the issues with obesity and long-term chronic disease and how we haven't been really able to find a way to fix the problem in a way. I mean, it's a complicated problem, but there is some discussion about how emerging technologies like AI, big data, can help make patients feel more in control of their health, leading to better outcomes for their health and better actions for their own health. Regarding the metaverse, as an example here, in 2019-16, the World Economic Forum asserted that digital technology would transform health services. I think this should say 2016. I'm not sure. The metaverse may have a role to play in the healthcare delivery, as has been the case in other sectors. For example, the city of Seoul in Korea has announced it will deliver its municipal administration, including economic, cultural, tourism, educational, and civic services in a metaverse environment. So I thought that was pretty interesting. So some major cities are already diving straight into the metaverse for better or for worse here. It even says, while there is no accepted definition of a metaverse yet, it is posited to have its economy and native currencies where people can exchange value physically and virtually. So a lot of talk about the metaverse in the latest in the last year or so, you know, they go into examples for possibilities with the metaverse, for chronic disease, including social prescribing in the metaverse, which is an approach to enable link workers to recognize the broader social determinants of health and refer people to a wide range of nonclinical services. This can encompass healthcare, financial, social services, networking, daily activities, social support, cooking, healthy, eating, advice, sports, and other activities. Yeah. And these things, you know, when you go to the doctor's office, typically these are discussed, but not really emphasized too much. And I think, and what this article is arguing is that in the metaverse, people will feel more inclined to take care of themselves, which, you know, it's kind of interesting because you're, you know, in a metaverse situation, or if you're using VR, for example, you're kind of just sitting, it's not very active, although, you know, one can argue many of the games in the metaverse and VR do force you to be very active. So I guess that's part of it. They go into tokenomics, play to earn. Yeah. So I just wanted to make you guys aware of this article here. I don't know if anybody has read it or wants to talk about it. All right. Moving on to the next article. And this was a company I was not aware of previously. So this was out July 18th, just a couple of days ago, in Utah Business Magazine or Journal. So again, healthcare records on the blockchain. We've all heard this a number of times. The company called Galvin says they're working on it and doing it. So this article just goes into, you know, the projects they have going on. The CEO, Adam Sharp here says the current health record system process is clunky. No surprise there. A graduate of the University of Utah School of Medicine, Sharp says that if medical information changes and a patient develops a new allergy or medical condition outside their primary care provider, that patient would need to go through their primary care provider to change their record. Okay. So, you know, discussing how blockchain or decentralized tech can improve this and allow patients to own their data. It even references a 2016 white paper from Deloitte about blockchain and healthcare. Yeah. Here it all says, although widespread adoption of blockchain in healthcare might still be limited by various organizational, technological, and governance barriers, which we all know, the COVID pandemic has clearly accentuated the need for security centralized multi-purpose platforms for coordination and large-scale transfer of sensitive information such as contact tracing, vaccination status monitoring, COVID health certificate issuance. So just wanted to put that out there. Galvin is a company based in Lehi or Lehi. So I'm not too familiar with them as anybody familiar with Galvin. Okay. So moving on here. Decentralized clinical trials. So I think everyone here has heard about the term decentralized clinical trials. It's used to refer to clinical trials that aren't traditional or don't take place in a single clinical setting. Oftentimes, they allow patients to participate from their homes or using some of their devices, medical devices, at home. And it was just interesting to read this article because it discusses the term decentralized and how it's a terrible name for a promising innovation. So I thought it was interesting because we often find ourselves discussing the terminology in the space and trying to find ways to either find consensus or disagree or agree on specific terms. So I thought it was interesting to include this article for today's meeting and just to make you aware of this information here. I agree with your comment about the term decentralized is a terrible term there. Most people in the blockchain community think about decentralized in the way that blockchains can be decentralized, but in clinical trials the FDA has actually defined what it means and it's that the technology is distributed and there's more remote data capture. So it's important for us to communicate accurately with what, even if we use the same terms, they could have different meanings. Exactly. And there's also a glossary from the trials at home project and this is run by the IMI in Europe. So this might be helpful for anyone who is new to the space or actually anybody at all because it really helps clarify some of the terminology really well. So I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of this and had access to it. Let's see here that there was one more thing I wanted to point out. Despite its increasing use decentralized clinical trial falls short in highlighting the envision of benefits for clinical trial participants. The term decentralized does not suggest that the trial activities are centralized from the participant's perspective and may even suggest the opposite. Yeah. So again, it's good to know what we're talking about when we're using these words. So there you go. Okay. Next I have an article talking about a company called sober peer who partnered with burst IQ actually. So maybe Wendy, you can talk a little bit about this if you're aware of it. And they aim to transform aging health tech to Web 3 digital health data economy. So sober peer is a leader in the behavioral science platforms for mental and addictive health. And they've entered an agreement with burst IQ, which is a blockchain enabled data solutions platform for healthcare. Thank you, right. I was not directly involved with this project, but I was pleased that sober peer has this wonderful mission and they were looking for a platform that would help them recognize the successes of individuals who are really trying to reach sobriety. And we were thrilled that they recognized that burst IQ platform was really ready and out of the box nearly out of the box solution for them to achieve what they set out to do. So I know that there were discussions about how to monetize some of the capabilities, but I wasn't part of what the final determinations were. So fair. I mean, I mean, this is quite an interesting use case and challenge really, because obviously it can help a lot of people find help, get sober if that's what they're trying to do and just become more aware of the tools out there. I agree. Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I think is important that we talk about often is the case of data privacy. And in this particular use case for people trying to quit drinking or drugs, privacy is very important because most people don't want to have that publicly shared. So here it even says partnering with sober peer really supports our mission to make the world a healthier place. Our technology will help sober peer securely manage the sensitive data required to accurately represent patients digital twins and stealing a necessary layer of trust to the digital patient experience. So Frank Ricotta, the CEO of VersaQ. Something I can share too. We often in health blockchain environment, we often talk about the need to design our technology so that it meets all the requirements that a technology must meet anyway for HIPAA. But when dealing with substance abuse, there is an additional regulation that applies. It's 42 CFR2. And it requires additional and privacy protections for those individuals for records that contain substance abuse information. And it's much more the access permissions and controls are much more stringent. So it's necessary to design the platform to meet those requirements as well. That is interesting. Thanks for sharing that, Wendy. And I just looked up 42 CFR2 as well. So confidentiality of substance use disorder patient records. So here you have an explanation of those requirements. So good to know. This issue with substance abuse also comes up with some aspects of mental health because some people who have mental health are being treated for mental health disorders self-medicate with substances. And it also comes up with dealing with justice-involved individuals who had experiences in the justice system. They are also more likely to have experiences with substance abuse. And when integrating records of multiple health records for those populations, one of the first things I ask is, do we need to protect records for substance abuse as well? So it's just valuable to keep that in mind. Yeah. And when these healthcare blockchain companies are building, I think the regulation is critical. I mean, if you don't get the regulation right, you can get shut down quite quickly. So very important information. Thank you. Actually, I did want to share one more thing here I noticed. So the founder and president of Silver Peer did mention in a BERS IQ capability is impressive. Moving our digital health platform onto the blockchain ensures we will continue to lead the market in decentralizing the control and decision-making for a new type of data to support precision medicine. So very broadly thinking aspects here. Our worldwide customer base needs secure patient-centric data for better outcome decisions where patients and providers share the same information and both are rewarded for collaborating with its use. I think that's really critical. I'm glad they mentioned this here because we do need to have the same information providers and the patient. And then also rewarding both for collaborating on its use. I think that's also really insightful and hopefully you know, I hope this partnership continues to grow. They support four point or 2.4 million days of digital behavioral health recovery so far. Okay. The next article I saw was from Forbes actually, the potential of blockchain technology to address healthcare's biggest challenges. I feel like this title could have been written anytime in the last six or seven years, but it was published two days ago and they discuss hospital cybersecurity breaches as one of the issues. So protecting data with blockchain to prevent cyber attacks. I think that's a major concern people have in that healthcare industry overall and it shows no signs of slowing down. So we're continuing to see more and more hacks into hospital systems and different databases. In April of this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a warning about ransomware, about a ransomware group targeting the healthcare ecosystem. So here it just goes into what blockchain is generally, why blockchain has the potential to revolutionize healthcare. So a couple of things here, they say faster processes. In some ways, yes. In some ways, maybe not. But in an industry where faxing is still popular to share information and paper checks are predominantly used for payment among insurance companies, blockchain offers much faster alternative. That's true. For payments, I do think that blockchain really does make sense much more fast than sending a check. I think the issue is what's the volatility look like. But then you can also argue stable coins can be used potentially to process some of these payments. And I don't know if anybody here has seen a hospital processing with stable coins. I did see that there were some hospitals accepting donations to their nonprofit organizations in cryptocurrency, but not for payments for services. Secure transactions, of course. Talk about protections that can be enabled with blockchain. Traceability and reliability. So for sure, executives prefer not to exchange important information over email because there's no proof of receipt and emails could mistakenly end up in spam folders or get stuck in an outbox. Blockchain provides proof of delivery, receipt and opening to ensure traceability and reliable communication and eliminate barriers to transactions. So this point is kind of interesting to me. I don't know if I totally agree, actually, because there are many tools now that can basically marketing tools that can enable people to see whether or not an email you send has been opened when it was opened. And, you know, you can have a read receipt as well sent back to the sender. So, yeah, just I don't know if anyone has any opinions on this, but... I agree with that, too, Ray. One of the things that we often talk about in this group, too, is that blockchain is software, not magic. And it's capabilities. It has, you know, it's a limited part of the architecture stack and its capabilities are basically what we designed it to be. Some people outside of the blockchain community argue that you could build a blockchain based system outside of, excuse me, you could build many of the same features without blockchain. I suppose with the, with unlimited resources you could. And so I agree with you that it's often best to be nuanced. I'm eager to hear from those of you who also work in blockchain companies, you know, how you perceive this. And we take an opinion on this. Thanks, Wendy. Appreciate that. And then they talk also about barriers to adoption. This is a pretty general article, I would say, for people that might not be aware of blockchain and healthcare at all, I would say. There are two major barriers preventing blockchain tech from being adopted by hospitals and healthcare organizations. The first is that healthcare as notorious as slow to accept or to adopt new technology. Okay. And the other notable consideration is there is no vendor healthcare organizations can buy blockchain from. It is completely new. Yeah. So I think here it's quite interesting. It's saying that there are no companies or vendors that healthcare organizations can work with. But I think what their point is that you can't actually buy the blockchain, but you can still buy many of the services and many of the, you know, tools that can be used to implement a blockchain solution. So it's quite interesting. Yeah. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this article as a great source, but it's just interesting to see what Forbes is thinking about the issue. This is written by CTO at zealous, a leading payments company in healthcare. So yeah, that's an interesting one. But definitely there are many companies trying to get your business here in the healthcare blockchain space. For sure, maybe they haven't been as developed or in the market as long as Epic Concernor. So I know that's fair, but you know, this, this kind of technology is going to take time for adoption to happen. And the leaders are going to be the ones that are experimenting now, not in five or 10 years. All right. So I did see this article about storing and analyzing a genome on the blockchain. I thought that was interesting. It's in the genome biology journal. So, you know, full article available here. It's quite interesting. They go into exactly what the process would look like. They used SAM chain. So I don't know if anyone has worked with SAM chain or VCF chain before, but this is the model that they used. And it clarifies here, multi chain is the technology that SAM chain is built upon. So, you know, they go into private blockchain networks to talk about how some of the design provides advantages over blockchain, other blockchain data storage methods. So this is a good read for anyone who has been investigating how blockchain can be used for the DNA genome sequencing and data management space. Quite technical. So that's why I put it in the educational nuggets section here. I think they also talked about ZK's zero-nod proofs to some degree here somewhere. Yeah. Has anyone used SAM chain or heard of it? Feel free to, you know, take a look at this article when you get a chance. And the other final thing here is just my recent podcast episode with Anthony Diaz on gamifying health. Anthony is a CEO and founder of Health Hero, which has developed sort of this like NFT gaming universe or metaverse. And it allows people to upload some of their health information and track their activity. What was interesting to me about this company is they have live integrations with Microsoft Teams, Slack, Epic and Cerner. So there is some, you know, current utilization of this platform now. I think Anthony mentioned how many people actually use the platform and it was in like the thousands. So I think it's really interesting to see that kind of progress happening. And yeah, that's all I had for today's meeting. Did anyone else have any articles or announcements they would like to share? Okay. Well, we can end a little bit early today. I do appreciate all of you and your input. Wendy, thanks for sharing the GBA Roundtable link in the chat. So if anyone was interested in attending that, please do get that link before the Zoom closes here. And so that just so we can make sure we have it here in the YouTube link. So this is the page for Global Blockchain Association. Yes, please do attend because there are some individuals who are new to blockchain sometimes or don't necessarily understand how blockchain can impact healthcare. We just love additional voices for education and discussion that's meant to be thought provoking as we can make it. So please do attend if you are able. Awesome. Thank you, Wendy. All right. Well, thank you, everybody. You have a good rest of your day and we'll talk to you again in about two weeks. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Ray. Thanks, Ray. Thanks, Wendy.