Blog

The Future of Healthcare Technology Roundtable Series assembles insights from five important cohorts; Innovators, Physicians, Executives, Payors and Policy Makers, to discuss emerging trends and opportunities in today’s healthcare environment. We hope to enlighten, inform, and provide thought leadership through this five-part written forum.

Download Document

The Future of Healthcare Technology Roundtable Series assembles insights from five important cohorts; Innovators, Physicians, Executives, Payors and Policy Makers, to discuss emerging trends and opportunities in today’s healthcare environment. We hope to enlighten, inform, and provide thought leadership through this five-part written forum.

Download Document

Solution Leverages Blockchain to Enable Self-Sovereign Digital Identity for Healthcare Professionals

CLEVELAND, February 3, 2020 – Axuall and The MetroHealth System will collaborate to test digital credentials for segments of its physician staff. The pilot will use new technologies and workflows to acquire, manage, and share digital credentials via a nationwide network of practitioners, health systems, and primary source issuers.

When fully deployed, practitioners will hold an up-to-date, reusable, and verified set of digital credentials that will enable a considerably faster and more efficient privileging and payor enrollment process.

The goal will be to apply this technology to standard processes and bylaws to reduce credentialing wait times, improve accuracy, and alleviate practitioner administrative burden. Ultimately this will improve patient access to care by shortening the hiring process for health care systems, especially as delivery channels move beyond brick-and-mortar to telehealth and other innovative approaches.

The Axuall Network leverages blockchain and portable digital wallets to enable secure, real-time sharing and monitoring of credentials. The technology uses biometrics to confirm practitioner identity and protect privacy, enabling practitioners to control how and when their credentials are shared.

These new digital portfolios will include documentation of a practitioner’s education, specialty training and board certifications, licenses, sanctions or medical malpractice judgments, evaluations, work history and hospital affiliations. In short, a verified, instantly accessible professional profile that otherwise might take an employer or accreditation agency weeks or even months to assemble.

“We are thrilled to work with MetroHealth to test, refine, and perfect this technology,” said Charlie Lougheed, Axuall’s CEO. “Reducing unnecessary costs and burdens on practitioners is core to our mission of helping practitioners practice less paperwork and more medicine”.

Axuall was formed in 2018 and raised $3 million in seed capital for R&D in 2019. In December, it began a pilot with Hyr Medical and is expected to announce additional pilots in 2020 as the technology and workflows are perfected and its national network of credential issuing partners grows.

“We are excited to work together with Axuall to bring this innovation to our organization,” said Julie Jacono, MetroHealth Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. “Meeting the needs of our community requires that we reduce the barriers to deploying clinical resources across new geographies and delivery channels.”

About the MetroHealth System

The MetroHealth System is an essential health system committed to providing health care to everyone in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Advancing medical care is only part of what we do. We are driven by the relentless pursuit of healthy, thriving communities for everyone. The health system is home to Cuyahoga County’s most experienced Level I Adult Trauma Center, verified since 1992, and the only adult and pediatric burn center in the state of Ohio.

As an academic medical center, MetroHealth is committed to teaching and research. Each active staff physician holds a faculty appointment at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and its main campus hospital houses a Cleveland Metropolitan School District high school of science and health.

About Axuall, Inc.

Axuall is a digital network for verifying identity, credentials, and authenticity in real-time. We address a multibillion-dollar need to eliminate waste, prevent fraud, manage risk, and meet the demand for next-generation products and services in healthcare.

The New Year brings about various resolutions for millions across the globe. For many, that means putting more focus on their physical and mental health. Blockchain’s ability to revolutionize healthcare is undeniable. When applied to healthcare, blockchain is a shared platform that decentralizes health data without compromising the security of sensitive information. For example, patients can potentially use their own signatures, combined with a hospital signature, to unlock data to provide secure access to medical information for use in treatment. Patients could have full control of their medical information, selecting the information they want shared and viewed by providers or doctors. This model lifts the costly burden of maintaining patient’s medical histories away from hospitals. Also, counterfeit medicine is a big issue pharma companies face in their everyday operations since there are many stakeholders involved in the supply chain. Recall of drugs and avoiding counterfeit drugs from entering into legit marketplaces will help in reducing the losses and improving service delivery to the end customer. Blockchain could be used to maintain the entire supply chain in healthcare.

Below is a list of some interesting healthcare applications powered by Hyperledger technology you may or may not have known about:

Axuall – Axuall is a digital network for verifying identity, credentials, and authenticity in real-time using the Sorvin Network and Hyperledger Indy. The Axuall network is currently in pilot with Hyr Medical and their 650+ physician network in addition to two other health systems. Physicians’ time is better spent practicing medicine than filling out redundant, repetitive credentialing paperwork consisting of unchanging information. Using Axuall’s digital credentialing network, physicians will be able to present fully compliant credential sets to participating healthcare systems and medical groups they are affiliated with or applying to. Utilizing the cryptographic constructs from Hyperledger Indy, healthcare organizations will be able to verify the validity of a physician’s credentials – spanning medical education, training, licensing, board certification, work history, competency evaluations, sanctions, and adverse events – ensuring compliance with industry standards, regulatory mandates, and health system bylaws.

KitChain – LedgerDomain joined forces with other industry leaders like Pfizer, IQVIA, UPS, Merck, UCLA Health, GSK, Thermo Fisher, and Biogen to build out a pilot on Hyperledger Fabric called KitChain. Scoped and developed over the course of two years, KitChain aims to demonstrate a robust collaborative model for managing the pharmaceutical clinical supply chain, creating an immutable record for shipment and event tracking without the need to resort to paperwork and manual transcription. KitChain has two major components: a frontend mobile application and a backend blockchain server. The backend was implemented in Golang and used Hyperledger Fabric, the LedgerDomain Selvedge blockchain app platform, and LedgerDomain’s DocuSeal framework, encompassing smart contracts and application logic. As such, the pilot has a fully functioning highly secure blockchain backend.

MELLODDY Project – This drug discovery project uses Amazon Web Services technologies to execute Machine Learning algorithms from academic partners on a large scale. The data never leaves the owner’s infrastructure and only non-sensitive models are exchanged. A central dispatcher allows each partner to share a common model to be consolidated collectively. To provide full traceability of the operations, the platform is based on a private blockchain and uses Substra, a software framework for orchestrating distributed machine learning tasks in a secure way. Substra is based on Hyperledger Fabric. MELLODDY is designed to prevent the leaking of proprietary information from one data set to another or through one model to another while at the same time boosting the predictive performance and applicability domain of the models by leveraging all available data. The MELLODDY consortium consists of 17 partners:

• 10 pharmaceutical companies: Amgen, Astellas, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Merck KgaA, Novartis, and Institut de Recherches Servier
• Two academic universities: KU Leuven, Budapesti Muszaki es Gazdasagtudomanyi Egyetem
• Four subject matter experts: Owkin, Substra Foundation, Loodse, Iktos
• One large AI computing company: NVIDIA

MyClinic.com – Medicalchain was one of the first healthcare blockchain companies to join the Hyperledger community, signing on as a member in 2017. The company’s ethos is to empower patients to have access to their medical records. Providing patients with direct access to their data unlocks the barriers we face in healthcare today such as patient choice and interoperability issues. A doctor-led team based in the UK, Medicalchain trialled the first telemedicine consultation using blockchain technology. The company’s first blockchain-based product to market, MyClinic.com, makes it easy to schedule appointments, review priligy medical reports and request further investigations or assistance using an Android and iOS app. Now the company is set to focus on scalability with the view to onboarding clinics and patients locally, nationally and internationally.

Verified.Me – SecureKey launched its innovative and in-demand network to Canadian consumers in early 2019. Verified.Me is a blockchain-based digital identity network built upon Hyperledger Fabric 1.2 that enables consumers to stay in control of their information by choosing when to share information and with whom, reducing unnecessary oversharing of personal information. Sun Life Financial has signed on as an early adopter and the first North American (health) insurer, making it easier for their clients to do business with the company. Dynacare, one of Canada’s largest and most respected providers of health and wellness solutions, has joined the Verified.Me network. Dynacare’s participation will make it easier for Canadians to verify their identities as well as gain safer and faster access to their health information.

Curious about blockchain and advances in healthcare? Contribute to the conversation by joining the Hyperledger Healthcare Special Interest Group (HC-SIG). Open to anyone, the SIG was created to offer healthcare professionals and technologists a forum to discuss the implementation of technology solutions using blockchain technologies in general like Hyperledger frameworks and toolsets in specific.

Axuall, Inc. today announced that it has successfully completed a System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2® Type I Audit examination for their Identify and Credential Verification System. Axuall, Inc. retained international business advisory firm Skoda Minotti for its SOC 2® audit work. Axuall, Inc. selected Skoda Minotti after an intensive search based on their reputation as a leading risk advisory and compliance firm.

Ben Osbrach, CISSP, CISA, QSA, CICP, CCSFP, partner-in-charge of Skoda Minotti’s cyber and risk advisory group says, “We were excited to work with Axuall from the very start. They are an intriguing organization delivering high-quality services and their business adds to our growing SOC reporting practice.”

SOC 2® engagements are performed in accordance with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) AT-C 205, Reporting on Controls at a Service Organization and based on the trust service principles outlined in the AICPA Guide, Reporting on Controls at a Service Organization Relevant to Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, or Privacy. The SOC 2® Type I report is performed by an independent auditing firm and is intended to provide an understanding of the service organization’s suitability of the design of its internal controls. A service organization may select any or all of the trust service principles applicable to their business and Axuall chose to report on security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. The successful completion of this voluntary engagement illustrates Axuall’s ongoing commitment to create and maintain a secure operating environment for their clients’ confidential data.

Skoda Minotti’s testing of Axuall’s controls included examination of their policies and procedures regarding network connectivity, firewall configurations, systems development life cycle, computer operations, logical access, data transmission, backup and disaster recovery, and other critical operational areas of their business. Upon completion of the audit, Axuall received a Service Auditor’s Report with an unqualified opinion demonstrating that their policies, procedures, and infrastructure meet or exceed the stringent SOC 2® criteria.

The successful completion of our SOC 2® examination audit provides Axuall’s subscribers and partners with the assurance that the controls and safeguards we employ to protect and secure their data are in line with industry standards and best practices,” said Charlie Lougheed, Axuall CEO.

—

About Axuall, Inc.

Axuall is a digital network for verifying identity, credentials, and authenticity in real-time. We address a multibillion-dollar need to eliminate waste, prevent fraud, manage risk, and meet the demand for next-generation products and services in healthcare.

About – Skoda Minotti

Skoda Minotti is a Certified Public Accounting Firm based in Cleveland, OH offering a variety of tax, finance, and business advisory services in virtually every area of business. The Risk Advisory practice specializes in SOC Reporting, PCI DSS Compliance, HIPAA Compliance and HITRUST validation, FISMA, NIST, ISO 27001, Vulnerability and Penetration Testing, and other regulatory information security assessments. Staffs in Skoda Minotti’s Risk Advisory hold several industry certifications including Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), GIAC Penetration Tester (GPEN), and GIAC Web Application Penetration Tester (GWAPT). For more information about Skoda Minotti’s Risk Advisory Services, please visit skodaminotti.com/risk.

San Francisco, JPMorgan Healthcare Conference: Alliance addresses the billion-dollar challenge of balancing workforce demands with rising standards for placing qualified healthcare practitioners.

Axuall, Inc. and Hyr Medical, Inc. announced today that the companies are engaged in a pilot to test and implement portable digital credentials across portions of Hyr Medical’s 650+ physician network. By leveraging Axuall’s national network of primary source credential issuers, physicians will be able to present fully compliant credential sets to participating healthcare systems and medical groups for which they apply to via the Hyr platform. Supported credential types include medical education, training, licensing, board certification, work history, competency evaluations, sanctions, and adverse events; credentials commonly required to meet industry standards, regulations, and health system bylaws.

Regulations require healthcare employers and health plans to credential practitioners upon hire and periodically after that – a process that takes significant operating expense and anywhere from 3 to 6 months to complete. This process often must be repeated for each additional care setting for which a physician is deployed. Meanwhile, qualified physicians wait to start work, patients wait for care, and healthcare systems lose money.

“Together, the Hyr and Axuall technologies will play complementary roles in reducing unnecessary costs and time to place qualified physicians into much-needed positions,” stated Charlie Lougheed, Axuall’s CEO. “We expect to learn a great deal during this pilot as we observe how this technology reshapes workflows and improves efficiencies.”

The streamlined placement of qualified healthcare professionals, aided by secure digital credentials, offers the potential to save the U.S. healthcare system billions annually while improving efficiency, accuracy, privacy, and security. Hyr Medical’s online network enables qualified physicians and healthcare systems to directly connect for freelance (“locum tenens”), telehealth and permanent jobs. Leveraging patent pending blockchain technology, Axuall’s network enables physicians to acquire digital versions of their credentials from authorized issuers such as medical schools, residency programs, license bureaus, and medical boards, and then share them securely with healthcare systems and medical groups instantly.

“As the U.S. healthcare system grapples with the challenges of meeting the growing demand for care coupled with the disparity in physician density between metro and rural locations, healthcare employers are looking for new ways to attract, engage and deploy practitioners” stated Hyr Medical CEO, Manoj Jhaveri. “We expect new models like on-demand freelancing, telehealth and faster placement to play a significant role in addressing these challenges. Technologies like Axuall and Hyr will enable these advancements.”

The pilot will also study the experience of the practitioners as they acquire, manage, and share their digital credentials with employers (i.e., their “digital wallet”). Data will be collected to better understand how the technologies improve workflow, reduce redundancy, and create empowering experiences for physicians. Building upon this momentum, Axuall has recently begun separate pilots with two health systems, with more details to be announced shortly.

“Having participated in Axuall’s early testing, I am encouraged by the potential that this technology has to greatly improve the painful credentialing process that exists today” stated Laura Dewitt, MD/MBA and Anesthesiologist. “Physicians’ time is better spent practicing medicine over filling out repetitive paperwork which often consists of unchanging information previously verified multiple times in the past. We recognize that credentialing is essential to quality and safety, and streamlining the processes will improve healthcare for practitioners, healthcare organizations and patients alike.”

About Axuall

Axuall is a digital verification company that is changing the way organizations and individuals attest to and verify facts. Powered by leading edge technology, the Axuall network provides a streamlined approach to validating assertions and managing static and dynamic proofs within a tamperproof digital ledger; forming the basis of new economy that rewards verifiers while reducing cost, risk and inefficiency for organizations that subscribe to this information. For more info, please visit www.axuall.com and follow @axuall on Twitter.

About Hyr Medical

Hyr Medical has created an online marketplace that eliminates the agency middle man and reduces overhead costs. We enable direct connections between Practitioners and Healthcare Systems/Groups, automate portions of the credentialing process, and provide upfront transparency into rates and practice locations. The result is significantly faster credentialing, lower costs for Healthcare Systems/Groups, significantly higher rates for Physicians, and a system that finally attracts and rewards quality, Freelance Practitioners. For more info, please visit www.hyrmed.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

The Future of Healthcare Technology Roundtable Series assembles insights from five important cohorts; Innovators, Physicians, Executives, Payors and Policy Makers, to discuss emerging trends and opportunities in today’s healthcare environment. We hope to enlighten, inform, and provide thought leadership through this five-part written forum.

Download Document

Listen to this Podcast

View this article.

CLEVELAND, September 25, 2019 – Axuall, a next-generation digital network for verifying identity, credentials, and authenticity in real-time, announced today that it closed a $3 million seed financing round with leading strategic, angel, and venture capital investors.

Participating in the round are JumpStart (lead), Zapis Capital Group, M25, North Coast Angel Fund, Kettledrum Ventures, and Drummond Road Capital. This round of funding will be used to hire additional software engineering and product personnel, conduct several large scale pilots, develop the company’s partner network, and complete research and development for Axuall’s commercial release. Axuall is led by CEO Charlie Lougheed, an industry veteran who previously co-founded Explorys, a Cleveland-based healthcare big data and analytics company purchased by IBM in 2015.

“Axuall has been designed from the start to address a multibillion-dollar need to meet the demand for new delivery channels, products, and services in healthcare and other industries where proof matters,” stated Lougheed. “We chose healthcare as our first market because it faces considerable challenges related to increasing practitioner shortages, delivery channel expansion, and the growing demands of an aging population. Together, these challenges drive the urgency to reduce the administrative burden on its practitioners, reduce delays in hiring, accelerate revenue capture, and improve access to care.”

Axuall makes presenting professional credentials easy, safe, secure, and instantaneous. The technology enables healthcare providers to request and receive digitally signed credentials from primary sources that they can securely share with employers, health systems, and insurance plans. The Axuall network proactively monitors conditional events, such as expirations and dependencies, allowing practitioners to address issues the moment they arise. This means credentials will always be up-to-date, ready to present, and aligned with standards. This eliminates the need for health systems to request redundant information, dramatically shortening the time it takes to hire, privilege, enroll, and activate practitioners.

“We expect the need to verify facts quickly and efficiently to increase as organizations grow their offerings and expand their workforce,” said Rem Harris, JumpStart’s senior partner in charge of investing. “Axuall’s development of a realtime network and marketplace for verified facts will provide much-needed capabilities to the market.”

In August, Axuall was unanimously approved as a Sovrin Steward by the Sovrin Foundation Board of Trustees. Based on a public permissioned blockchain model, the Sovrin Network ledger is operated by a select community of Stewards that includes thought leaders from across software, financial services, telecommunications, non-profit, and law.

—

About Axuall, Inc.

Axuall is a digital network for verifying identity, credentials, and authenticity in real-time. We address a multibillion-dollar need to eliminate waste, prevent fraud, manage risk, and meet the demand for next-generation products and services in healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, government, and other industries where proof matters.

For more information, contact Jeffrey Stern | info@axuall.com

About JumpStart, Inc.

JumpStart is a nationally recognized investing, entrepreneurial support and economic development organization dedicated to unlocking the full potential of diverse and ambitious entrepreneurs to economically transform entire communities.