Industry
The Healthcare Industry is the primary target for the gathering of medical records. Currently, the industry stores healthcare information on patients in huge information silos. These silos make it difficult to share medical records within specific healthcare provider networks and impossible to share with out-of-network providers. HIPAA regulations make it very difficult to share information within the current market based medical record system. Many medical practices have their own patient portal to which they share medical files for the benefit of the patient. However, the information is not transferable or easily portable to needed specialists that may be in or out of the network of the originating office. These are limited and do not typically include the full spectrum of medical information including imaging, pharmacy, therapists and laboratory results. Medical decisions are being made without the full medical picture.
Customers
The customers break down into three major groups:
- Individual Users: Initial focus is on patients with complex, life-threatening, and/or high-risk medical conditions. The K-Care Cloud Based platform will be free to patients, ensuring the patient and family are well informed of all medical issues regarding their care and treatment. Further, it will give the the patient the ability to share their unique medical information in real time with any medical provider regardless of network or affiliation. Future releases will ultimately be centered on every person with a medical history that chooses to participate.
- Medical Groups and Providers: With a common K-care cloud-based, HIPAA compliant platform for all medical records and imaging, medical groups will have instant access to needed medical records at the time they are needed. The K-care cloud-based, HIPAA compliant platform will provide an instant communication tool for health care providers on the patient’s team regardless of geographic location or network affiliation. This ability will help to solve some of the difficult interoperability problems existing in the medical industry. The fees for this service to the provider will be at or below costs. Provider groups will have access to all of a patient’s records in a seamless, real-time manner. A better-informed patient is a better patient; having this information accessible on the K-Care platform improves medical care. Our nonprofit partners are putting money into this as donations, they are not getting any ownership or royalties from the investment; instead, they see this technology as a way to improve the healthcare they provide. The patient will be in an empowered, better-informed position to share needed records instantly, improving their healthcare and wellbeing, feeling better about the service provided.
- Insurance Companies: To manage healthcare costs and reduce redundant office visits, imaging, prescriptions and unnecessary lab tests, insurance companies will be the primary paying customer to K-Care. Our vision is that Medical Groups & Providers will be required by insurance providers to subscribe to this application. Redundant office visits, prescriptions and unnecessary imaging, lab tests due to record transfer protocols result in costs that insurance companies will be able to reduce and eliminate by record sharing across individual user’s medical team.
Competitors
K-Care has 3 major competitors, none of which offer the medical singularity of the K-Care platform:
Hospitals and Medical Groups – Traditional patient portals focused on providing personal health records in a non-comprehensive approach.
DrChrono – Mobile-based application that is primarily focused on back-office scheduling, billing and revenue cycle management while also incorporating a patient portal. Patient records are limited to the medical practice hosting the portal.
BurstIQ – The BurstIQ platform leverages blockchain and machine intelligence to enable data from disparate sources to be brought together in a single, unified data repository, to change the monetization of healthcare and to be shared quickly and easily while still maintaining HIPAA compliance. However, the platform goes beyond a simple health information exchange (HIE) or personal health record (PHR). BurstIQ is building an ecosystem where individuals can fully monetize and manage their data; they can share it, sell it or use it in exchange for access to products and services they care about. The for-profit product will not be free to individual users.
Patient Advantage
K-Care’s app is focusing on the patient first, placing control of information – their complete medical record, including actual imaging in real time regardless of geographic location or network affiliation – in the hands of the patient, and providing the ability to share complete information while additionally offering a HIPAA compliant communication vehicle for medical practitioners and patients while fighting life threatening illnesses. Our image sharing capabilities are in a high performance DICOM diagnostic format to ensure doctors can share imaging in real time. Patient Portals are limited to the medical records of the medical group that supports the portal. Existing patient portals do not include interactive communication opportunities for both patients and medical team members. Existing patient portals typically exclude Imaging, pharmaceuticals, alternative therapy and wellness records.
While it is possible that a person could have some of the benefits with a Medical Practice driven patient portal, this would only be valid with the following assumptions:
- Patients have access to all medical needs within a single Medical Practice. This would include not only Doctor care, all Specialist care, but also hospitalization, E.R., laboratory, imaging, pharmacy, therapists, etc.
- Patients do not need any medical support outside of the single Medical Practice.
- Patients remain with the same single Medical Practice for the duration of their life.
- Patients do not travel or need healthcare in different geographic locations.
Regulation
K-Care will operate in a regulated healthcare industry, facing two key regulatory systems which create an opportunity for the medical singularity:
- HIPAA – The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
- Revenue Cycle Management – Required by the Healthcare Accountability Act that puts the burden of costs management on medical practitioners and insurance providers