Unknown 0:00 People who have been in the NFT art art space in the audience, and including Alan has been a very important voice in the space. So we've been really excited about NF T's an art because what it means for ownership, and what it means for the respect of our data, and the ownership and the privacy around it. So we thought, who better to talk about this than healthcare professionals? So we're so glad today to be joined by Dr. Maria maida, she is rare, please correct me for the pronunciation of your name. Dr. arrayah is a founder, co founder of ballhead healthcare, and she's going to tell us all about how they've been approaching privacy, patient data. And we're also joined by healthcare technology architect. Yes, that's right. A lot of you know, Alan from the NF t rooms. But he is actually also an expert working in 10 years in healthcare technology. And we're so excited to have them here today. Just so everyone knows we are recording this session, you can see the red.in the title. So if you do come up here, just bear in mind that we are recording you. And we're really, really glad to have you. So let's just start with easy introductions. So we'd love for you just to very quickly introduce yourself. Maybe tell us where you're calling from what's outside your window. on my end, we look looks like we have a sunny day here in Luzon. All for those of you who don't know me, I'm Nettra. I'm a researcher and educator in purpose driven innovation. super happy to be here. I'm going to pass it over to you Raya. Sure, thank

Unknown 1:49 you so much, Nettra, and Luke, for creating this platform. And,

Unknown 1:52 Alan, it's

Unknown 1:53 great to meet you. I'm very much looking forward to learning from you. It's a cool day. This morning in New York City.

Unknown 2:03 Incredible Allen.

Unknown 2:06 Morning, everyone that's in America. It is raining here. So it's rainy and misty er this morning in Pittsburgh.

Unknown 2:19 And Luke, how are you doing?

Unknown 2:22 I'm doing great. And then sunny weather as well in Switzerland, but not too far from where you are anyhow. So I'll be exactly the same weather, a bit overcast, no one can see the mountains, but still nice sun.

Unknown 2:36 Wonderful. So we're gonna start off with the first question. And for those of you who want to follow along, or who are or who wants to send your question in advance, please click on my head and scroll down to the Twitter beyond currency, you get to see we're going to start off with the very first question, Raya, I'd love to, for you to tell us a bit about yourself and how you found your way into healthcare. And then I'm going to have a similar question for you, Alan, but Raya, please start us off. Sure, thank

Unknown 3:04 you so much Nettra. So I actually began my journey as a patient, I grew up in a rural community in Northern Ontario, Canada. So around age 14, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. And for those of you who understand our biology, it's a chronic condition. It's a very complicated condition, and it's very difficult to treat. And so I spent the large, large part of my youth just, you know, trying to understand how to how to treat my condition and spent a lot of time taking multiple pharmaceuticals. And one of the major issues that I noticed that always stuck with me during my childhood was the issues around rural and urban data, data, data transfer, and data holding, when I would travel to Toronto, which is 10 hours away, 1000 kilometers away, to kill sick Children's Hospital, every time we would come back to my small town, the data would never be there. And so we just always ended up with question marks around what was actually happening to me. And so fast forward to graduate school. So I ended up deciding that, you know, I was going to start to challenge my practitioners and even just have a deeper understanding of my chronic illness, I needed to become an authority in this space. So I became, I ended up doing my PhD in molecular toxicology, nutritional biochemistry, the University of Toronto essentially study the toxicity of th

e Western diet. And what was really, really interesting during this period as besides my symptoms actually getting a lot worse. I started to understand the idea of high dose nutrient therapy, its ability to prevent and reverse chronic disease states. And so that was just something that you know, was very interesting to me. And I started to dabble in holistic and lifestyle changes, and quickly started to notice a lot of shifts in my body and by that time, I already had a lot of side effects in the medication. So I was I had not only about my allergy Outside of Irritable Bowel Disease at that point, and then my dad got sick. And he actually got sick very, very quickly. It was a Saturday where he was diagnosed with metastatic gallbladder cancer. He was told Monday, he had to get chemotherapy. And again, you know, we were just trying to figure out what was going on with his medication, we wanted to get access to his data. And we just had no idea what was happening with his health. And we were very much rushed into this process. Sadly, my dad didn't make it, he passed away within three weeks. And, you know, I kind of just ended my PhD with, you know, losing my dad and just realizing that I needed to solve health care. And you know, there were two major issues that I really wanted to sell. One was chronic disease management, because the healthcare system really poorly manages chronic disease. And I think many of us understand that, and also this issue around centralized ownership and data portability. And so I kind of just moved into that space very quickly, primarily the preventative disease, preventative space and chronic disease management space. I started I started integrative health coaching, and working with people and then I met my now co founders of bowhead health. And that one one, father and son duo, Father ism, MD, PhD virologist, and the son is a software advertising has a background in gaming. And so we kind of came together, this is 2015. And realize that, you know, first of all, they wanted to help me scale my platform, my coaching platform and help people help people better manage their chronic diseases through an application. But when we kind of set out on this journey, we realized, you know, if we're not going to solve one of the fundamental issues in healthcare, which we believe at the time, and I still believe is health data management and the portability of data, and we actually weren't gonna be disrupting health care so so we kind of settled on this path. We were We were one of the early companies in May 2017, to do an Ico and we were very lucky, my brother in law is the inventor of bit address, which is one of the first Bitcoin paper wallets. So we had a lot of advisory support early on, and we we just set out on this journey to build out to build out our platform.

Unknown 7:01 Well, Ria, thank you for sharing so openly. I really admire you as someone in this space, who has both the scientific know how, but also the, you know, emotional connection. And I think, willingness and insight to look beyond also the traditional Western ways of doing medicine. So happy that you shared that. And I remember you sharing your story about your father and also how that led you to also found world smoothie day, which is probably a topic for another room, but just want to thank you again for being here. everyone. Welcome to our discussion about health care and blockchain. Dr. Raya Mehta has just introduced herself. She's the founder of ballhead. Health. We're really looking forward to hearing more about that. And I'd love to ask Alan now, Alan, how did you find your way to healthcare?

Unknown 7:55 I think it was just because I was a software engineer. And it was a consulting gig. And at that point, I didn't, you know, I spent a decade but really, as I sit here thinking about is probably closer to 1415 years because my first software development consulting gig was actually with a state agency that was focused on Developmental Disabilities. So we were doing a lot of things related to that project was like something calle

d like CBC codes. And yeah, after that, I ended up working directly for a healthcare operations company that was specific, specifically focused on like Medicaid and Medicare Services, more government health plan. So if you're in the States, there are two to two main sort of government run health care programs. Both. One is at the federal level, which is CMS. They have Medicare and they have other programs, but Medicare is the main one. And then at the state level, you have Medicaid, and then each state sort of has its own sort of like Medicaid program and they work with different health care, insurance providers to administrate those health care operations. CMS is still involved with Medicaid, but generally the states have more sort of power and control at that level with Medicaid. So Medicaid focuses mainly on usually lower income. Eric like people, some people have certain sort of disabilities and then Medicare is generally focused on aging population, I think, I don't know what exactly the number is somewhere in the six Early 60s. But in some scenarios, it could actually be late 50s. So I've just been in health care arena for the last 1415 years working for different health care plans. I won't specify which ones because this is being recorded. But I would say several.

Unknown 10:24 Thanks, Alan, for those international people who are joining, Alan has just given us an overview of the US healthcare system, the separation between Medicare and Medicaid and the the different layers as well at the federal level and the state level. Thanks, Ellen, for joining us.

Unknown 10:43 Real quick. Yeah, I just want to add, that was more in the government, right? There are, there's an entirely different, much larger wing or as large wing for what are called commercial plants. Right. So you have that's where if you have heard of companies in your, in the States, like, you heard of United Healthcare of Humana, you have the blues, which are like Blue Cross Blue Shield, and those sort of those are more in the commercial wing. And that's where most people when they code, they have a job and they get their health care, it's usually through one of those companies. So I was just speaking more to my experience in the the government plan, but I've also worked for commercial plans as well. It's sort of intermingled in a lot of places like the health plan could do both commercial and government. I just started out more in the government and, and then more lately have been in the commercial healthcare. As well, in pitch for this overview of how the healthcare industry in the US is organized, how actually would you characterize the healthcare industry in the US? And what problems are you trying to solve? Or also, you know, what, what examples Can you take from from that system? And we hear a lot about things that are wrong with the US healthcare system, will be there also some some good lessons for people outside of the US to learn from that healthcare system? Yeah, I would say, how would characterize it tragic. If I'm being completely honest, as a whole, I think that healthcare has probably gotten the least amount of attention from disruptive or technological perspective. Because it's just it's, it's something that needs to be really changed fundamentally, and how we approach it as a culture and society in America. And because we do not look at it with that lens, we continue just putting on more band aids and more just just piling on more trash. When we really need to relook at how we prioritize healthcare operations. Now that technology is very, very slowly starting to make its way in the healthcare operations. When you look at things like data ownership, who owns the data, no one knows who actually owns the data, whether it's the patient, or some would say the member whether it's the health care plan, whether it's the provider provider in this in its provider in this context is more like the physician, right, or like a hospital system. So there's no true data ownership. I guess that's maybe the one good thing is that there's a lot of ambiguit

y between like the different states and the federal government as to who owns their actual patient data. At the same time, who owns the data related to an individual. At the same time, we have things like we do have like the HIPAA, HIPAA, HIPAA laws, which have for medical data privacy, or just medical information, privacy, anything related to health, privacy, that is a good thing. The last thing is that there is serious adherence to that policy. So I think that's good, but there's just a lot of, you know, open questions and I think we we, we generally as a society, look at healthcare with the wrong lens.