Meet Kinect — Akoin’s partner disrupting healthcare in Africa and beyond!
February 12, 2019 - 5 minute read
Kinect Aims to Disrupt Healthcare in Emerging Markets Through Tokenization
Access to adequate healthcare services is a major challenge for low-income families in developing countries. Under-funded local healthcare providers, insufficient treatment methods and a lack of patient record keeping has lead to poor clinic attendances and deteriorating health.
London based blockchain startup Kinect aims to solve these issues by building a tokenized ecosystem for the healthcare economy that will drive behaviour change in patients and medical staff that will increase treatment adherence and productivity.
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Meet Kinect
During three years of researching the challenges of the healthcare sector in Africa, Kinect found that a lack of accountability and governance for healthcare funding, poor patient record keeping, and the ongoing costs of healthcare delivery are the biggest issues faced by the continent’s medical services industry.
As a result, Kinect is building an ecosystem to address every single one of these challenges through the use of blockchain technology to “change the landscape of healthcare delivery and funding in emerging markets.”
Chas Dabhia, Co-Founder & Head of Business Development, said “From a personal point of view it was upsetting to see such despair during my travels in Africa, this is despite vast sums being invested, much of the time medicines and resources are not getting to the right people at the right time — We aim to help rectify this with Kinect.”
The Kinect blockchain-powered healthcare solution is composed of three pillars; KinectNOW, KinectAID, and KinectHUMAN.
KinectNOW is a reward system that will drive the desired behaviour among patients and medical staff to assist with patient adherence and to boost health outcomes.
The incentive scheme will be driven by token-based rewards that participants will be able to spend at partnering local vendors and mobile network providers. Patients and healthcare workers will be able to “cash out” their tokens as a reward for improved health outcomes. This will create an incentive system that has the potential to improve clinic attendance, treatments, and health outcomes significantly.
KinectAID is a donation application that will provide private and institutional donors with complete transparency about the impact of their donations.
Featuring end-to-end donation tracking on the blockchain, KinectAID will enable donors to measure their impact by being able to follow the de-identified electronic health records of their sponsored individuals to ensure that their donated funds are being spent accordingly.
By providing transparent donation tracking and impact measurement, Kinect greatly reduces the potential for “leakage” or misappropriation of funds, which, in turn, means that the potential impact from charitable giving will be increased as more funds will reach the targeted individuals.
KinectHUMAN is the ecosystem’s Electronic Health Record database that captures medical treatment and outcomes. This ‘Big Data’ will be made accessible in de-identified format on the cloud for NGOs, governments, and pharma companies who will be able to better understand the impact of their medicines on patient outcomes in a real world setting.
Kinect’s team expects to have over 1 million medical records on file in up to five African countries by 2019 thanks to the use of custom atomization scanning technology that allows for paper-based records to be digitally stored. All medical data in the KinectHuman database will be stored on the blockchain in compliance with HIPAA guidelines to allow for secure sharing among healthcare industry stakeholders.
Tokenizing the Healthcare Industry
The Kinect platform will be powered by its own cryptocurrency called the Kinect Token (KCT), which will help to foster a “dollar-to-result” ecosystem. The Kinect Token (KCT) will be used in a number of different ways on the platform, which, in turn, will drive demand for the token. The KCT token use cases will include but are not limited to:
Charitable donations through the KinectAID app can be made in KCT tokens or can be converted into KCT tokens from fiat currencies or other cryptocurrencies.
All payments in the KinectNow incentive scheme will be made in KCT tokens.
Payments for medical supplies and services can be made in KCT tokens by both end users and medical practitioners.
Multinational corporations and marketing agencies who want to market to patients who have “opted-in” will be required to maintain a minimum balance of KCT tokens for access to the data.
Insurance companies who want access to more accurate healthcare data to calculate patient premiums can, at the patients’ consent, access this information through purchasing KCT.
Biomedical research houses and pharmaceutical companies will need to maintain a minimum balance of KCT tokens for access to the data.
Clinics and hospital may eventually adopt KinectHuman EHR and the KinectNOW incentive program, which would boost the adoption of the KCT token.
The Kinect Token will be used in a myriad of ways in the platform which will help to drive demand for the token. This could translate into a substantial increase in value as the Kinect ecosystem experiences an increase in adoption in the medical community across Africa.
The Blockchain as a Catalyst for Change
Already operating in Africa, the Kinect team is composed of healthcare entrepreneurs, doctors and developing market finance specialists who are experienced in developing catered healthcare solutions for emerging markets. With over 60 years of combined experience in healthcare, finance, and technology, the Kinect team is poised to leverage blockchain technology in a way that will create a positive impact on healthcare users across Africa.
Toby Carroll, Executive Chairman, said, “Kinect is an affordable digital healthcare solution that addresses the current inadequate healthcare infrastructure in the developing world. By incentivizing testing, treatment adherence and record keeping Kinect will drive behaviour change and encourage patient compliance, boost R&D data for pharma companies and support public health infrastructure. Kinect will ultimately impact healthcare in low income economies for the better.”
Kinect’s solution shows that blockchain technology and tokenization can be deployed as a catalyst for positive change at scale. Should the Kinect platform manage to achieve mass adoption across Africa and beyond, this could significantly improve the quality of life of those who struggle the most.
