17: Creating a Patient-controlled Medical Record with Mohammed from Patients Know Best

15 Minutes With The Doctor: Learn from Healthcare Entrepreneurs and Innovators

In this episode, we welcome Mohammad, founder of Patients Know Best. The platform is a patient-controlled medical record system with numerous features for users, including seeing results, communicating with health professionals, and sharing the medical record with family or friends. Learn about Mohammad’s early journey into creating software, how the company has grown to securing contracts which serve up to 2.3 million patients, and how they have started utilising the benefits of blockchain. What you will learn in this episode: - How the journey to Patients Know Best began? - What is Patients Know Best? - How the process works - Integrating multiple health platforms into a single point of access - How Patients Know Best generates income - Benefits of using Blockchain on PKB platform How the journey to Patients Know Best began? Whilst completing his A-levels, Mohammed read a book called Chaos, which was about nonlinear mathematics. It described chaotic systems like the weather, the earth’s geosphere, the immune system and the economy. It explained how chaos influenced each system. However, there wasn't anything about chaotic systems and how to program the model of the human body in the book. This sparked some interest into software and Mohammed decided to learn about it. “During my medical school summers, I would get a programming job. I wrote software to model the immune system and things like a heart attack. It was really interesting to use programming to help understand healthcare better and to deepen my computer skills.” How the process works When a patient attends the hospital for an appointment, the doctors will inform them that they can have access to their records. They are asked if they want to register and 70-90% of patients do agree. The registration process simply involves an email address and password. From then on, you get access to your data although it depends on which hospitals you’ve visited. “It works on a phone or laptop, as long as you have access to internet connection” The platform offers the ability to share all or certain parts of your information to family members or friends. Some incredible features include adding a Fitbit, connecting a glucose monitor, and you can also message your clinical team. Integrating multiple health platforms into a single point of access “The software is great because patients realise they only have to connect to us and we’ll connect them to everybody else.” In the UK, there are at least 4 main primary care IT systems, 6 main hospital IT system, and now there are over 100 connectable health devices. Once Patients Know Best connects to one of these systems or devices, it starts to work instantly. The PKB platform is upgraded weekly. How Patients Know Best generates income Patients Know Best operates as a software as a service business. There is a subscription fee paid by the health institution - The calculation is based on the number of people cared for by the institution. “As a hospital, once you're a subscriber and looking after patients, you can send unlimited amount of data for your patients with storage.” Benefits of using Blockchain on PKB platform Patients Know Best will be working with Dovetail Labs which won a research grant from SBRI Health Enterprise East, where they have built blockchain software to manage healthcare data – They have used blockchain to move data around from primary and secondary care settings. “Blockchain is a very transparent approach because it keeps a log of every transaction.” Blockchain technology is extremely powerful and it will dominate the healthcare and research industry in coming years according to Mohammad. Learn more about Patients Know Best The best place to learn about PKB is through the website: www.patientsknowbest.com