Polymer

Inspiration

The medical industry is lacking innovation. Currently, patient records are isolated and requesting medical records takes time. Personally, I've had to jump through hoops to get my medical records from the hospital, to my doctor, and then to my specialist. The current system is too inefficient. This problem is compounded when going to another country - my records would be nonexistent causing even more inconvenience for both the doctor and patient.

What it does

Polymer uses blockchain technology to allow doctors to store patient records on the immutable blockchain. To access the blockchain, each doctor has a public address which is verified against private keys. He will then be able to add, edit and search for patients - their past medical history and a chronological list of every interaction that the patient has ever had with every doctor in their lives. Since the data is on the blockchain, it is firstly decentralized, meaning no one organisation is in control of the data, and secondly, unalterable and hence there is no risk of it being tampered with.

How we built it

Polymer is built upon the Ethereum blockchain. The demo requires Web3, which is injected into the web browser via a Chrome extension called Metamask.

Challenges we ran into

Working with the blockchain, which is such a nascent technology, is difficult. We had to figure about allowing the web browser to interact with Metamask, verifying private keys and allowing transactions to be added on the testnet.

Accomplishments that we're proud of / What we learned

We believe strongly that the medical industry is in need of improvement and our hack was created to reflect that vision. We combined this passion with our knowledge and enthusiasm for blockchain technology to create something we hope will have a long-lasting and positive impact on society not only across North America but the world.

What's next for Polymer

We hope that Polymer can reach greater heights by having medical organisations and hospitals adopt this technology and create a better healthcare industry for citizens across the world. Furthermore, we would like to explore the option of uploading smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing other forms of use cases for doctors to safely store and access their patients' data