AfyaRekod launches Universal Patient Portal
Kenyan healthtech developer AfyaRekod has launched its Universal Patient Portal, a blockchain-based platform which enables patients and medical staff to securely access health data online
The subscription-based service offers a centralized hub for the storage of up-to-date health data and medical history documentation, with the aim of ‘ensuring effective ongoing medical management’ and providing ‘timely access to information in an emergency’.
The portal offers patients:
- The ability to manage ‘health diaries, prescriptions and hospital visit summaries’
- Access to telehealth services and healthcare resources
- Symptom trackers, reminders and notifications
- The ability to easily make records across multiple channels and devices.
The company added that while the platform provided a valuable resource for all patients, it was ‘especially useful for patients with chronic and hereditary illnesses, parents and pregnant women’, and that the portal also provides access to ‘a marketplace of various services within the healthcare ecosystem’.
AfyaRekod stated that access to medical records is a ‘vital tool’ in determining the ‘most accurate course of treatment, adding that ‘misdiagnosis is serious and can lead to a delay in treatment of the real condition’. It added that even countries with well-developed healthcare systems can suffer from cases of misdiagnosis, citing a report by the US Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine published in 2015 which found that around 12 million cases of patient misdiagnosis occur in the US every year.
“We identified the capture and storage of accurate data across every possible level of health infrastructure as a core problem,” said AfyaRekod CEO John Kamara. “Our tool now allows patients to create a portal with all their health data and most importantly gives patients sovereign rights of ownership of their data. The patient logs in and sees all their information, from every healthcare provider they have interacted with. The power of patients owning their health records and having real time access to their information is lifesaving, and it is their right to have access to it.”
A recent report by Allianz published in June identified remote healthcare services and the adoption of health tech as two key trends likely to define the future development of healthcare.