Page - 109 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

epidemics and pandemics, early detection and, as a result, the quality of the data obtained is important (Williamset al. 2013). In addition, patientsmust be certainof theanonymityandpurposeof theirpatientdataand thequalificationsof themedical staff treating them.Asolutionbasedona federatedblockchain, as described above, could guarantee data quality and security. Accordingly, not only patients would benefit, but also forecastswith higher reliability could bemade.A consortium that could oversee the consensus mechanism of such a blockchain could consist of government institutions, hospitals and familyphysicians.Theauthors arenot aware of any telemedicine company that already relies on the blockchain technology. TheSwedish start-upKry (kry.de), however, ispursuinganapproach thatmoves in this direction (Blix and Jeansson 2018). Founded in 2015, the company first tested themarketabilityof telemedicine inSweden. It entered theGermanmarket in December 2019, prompting patients to book a video consultation hour in the smartphoneappandanswer a fewquestions about their complaints (Stübner 2020). Such questions are intended to help the doctor prepare for the video chat. At the latest, after 20–30min—as promised by the start-up—a doctor will get in touch. The companyworks together with physicianswho can issue a prescription, a sick note, or a referral to a specialist. The company also cooperates with the online pharmacyDocMorris, which can deliver the requiredmedication to the patient on prescription if required (Stübner 2020). Although the company is not yet using blockchain technology at the time this text waswritten, such technology could be used in the future. This could, for example, alsomake the issuing of prescriptions via the service to patientsmore secure.During theCOVID-19-pandemic,Kryused its existing infrastructure to provide free video consultations to patients with COVID-19-symptoms (KRY2020). 4.2 Patientory Patientory (patientory.com) is oneof thefirst providers of distributed apps (dApps) andblockchain-basedsoftware solutions for thehealthcare industry,whichmeet the complex challenges of the healthcare sector (Warner 2019). The purpose of such apps is to enable consumers to better manage their own health information and thereby improve their quality of life and health while providing benefits to all stakeholders in the healthcare industry. In order to offer such solutions, the PTOYNet blockchain was launched and additionally, the Patientory Association was founded in2017asaglobalnon-profit organisationconsistingof institutionsof the healthcare industry. The members of the Patientory Association form the consortium to monitor the consensus mechanism of the federated PTOYNet blockchain (PatientoryAssociation 2019). On the one hand, patientory’s dashboard software provides institutions, service providers and insurance companieswith a simple and securemeans of storing and better managing health information. It thus serves the health management of a population by regulating and protecting the patient data in the blockchain while providing easy, secure access to actionable health information and administrative Blockchain as an Approach for Secure Data… 113