Article 6
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DRAGONCHAIN - BLOCKCHAIN
FOR HEALTHCARE by Jillian Godsil
>>>> Photo: Phil Abrahams,
Member/Partner at Dragonchain
Blockchain Industry Review
P
hil’s life is a series of apparent contradictions. As a young lad and following his parent’s divorce he moved out into a friend’s garage where he lived for the next two years. He was only 12. When I asked if Phil would do similar with his children the answer is a resounding no. He is an introvert yet has travelled the world speaking at conferences and meeting people. Phil is very much a solo thinker and inventor in the basement, but he also understands working with teams. He is the last man to keep a secret and yet much of his early career was covert and moreover he still works for the most secretive of organisations including the CIA, the NSA and Homeland Security. In fact, one time he was locked in a room in Washington for two days by representatives of one of those three-letteracronym named organisations where he was instructed in no uncertain terms not to release sensitive information. His reply? Well, stop telling me secretive stuff then. “I was told by my advisor in grad school that I was a modern-day Ender*, but if I wanted to save the world then I needed to fit in. It was a choice I had to make, and it went against my DNA, but I did it.”
So perhaps it is no surprise that his most successful business to date has been to uncover financial abuses in the US healthcare system and then to take that rigor and use it to secure data on the blockchain. First to the financial abuses in Healthcare; in the US the healthcare sector accounts for 35% of the economy so it’s a huge animal. Back in the 90s, Global Purchasing Organisations or GPOs were set up to streamline purchasing and reduce costs. What began as a good idea soon took on a life of its own and the GPOs now have their hands on the throats of healthcare. Of the $3 trillion that is spent on Healthcare purchasing, one third of that goes to the GPOs. “It’s a monopoly and because of lack of transparency, near impossible to unravel” The near impossible line guaranteed Phil’s interest and determination to investigate. He went in deep and documented the healthcare software systems across the US. “There are hundreds of thousands of systems and I managed to thread them together.” Phil put his theories into practice for the Lorna Linda University Medical Centre in California
