FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | December 9, 2021 | New York, NY
Today, ConsenSys Health, a company creating decentralized patient-centric healthcare networks, and the Digital Health Institute for Transformation (DHIT), a non-profit education and research foundation focused on digital health adoption, announced a strategic partnership to create the world’s first Health Utility Grids (HUGs).
HUGs are a new class of public utility for communities that incentivize health engagement for every citizen. By enabling fine-grained consent for either remunerated or donated analytical use of data at rest, or data exchange, HUGs aim to make healthcare more accessible, affordable and equitable.
ConsenSys Health is building next generation technology infrastructure to support a secure, private data locker for each citizen that improves interoperability between local healthcare providers and resources and enables personalization of health services and ultimately, better health outcomes.
“Anyone with a smartphone will be able to collect and curate their health and health-relevant data securely — without that data being merged into a large data lake or data warehouse. Transactions will be subject to the fine-grained consent of the data subject, with either compensation or quantified donation for the analytical use of their data by local and global stakeholders such as healthcare providers and clinical researchers,” according to Heather Leigh Flannery, Founder and CEO of ConsenSys Health. “Each interoperable HUG is powered by ConsenSys Health’s Elevated Compute™ platform, a unique convergence of blockchain, artificial intelligence, and advanced privacy-preserving technologies enabling analytical models to compute on decentralized data at rest. The self-sovereign identities provisioned by HUGs are the first critical step towards realizing self-sovereign data, which will enable the use of trusted AI to aid communities in matching resources to individual needs.”
According to Michael Levy, CEO of DHIT, “ConsenSys Health solves one of the most critical problems facing equitable healthcare today — a transparent, unbiased, individually-owned and protected health data infrastructure capable of being the next major public utility, no different than gas, water, or electricity. One of the most costly issues facing society today is the lack of access to real-time, real-world data pertaining to drivers of health, and the lack of shared insights from that data between healthcare providers and community services. Partnering with ConsenSys Health accelerates DHIT’s vision and gives the communities we serve the best chance of a future where caring for ourselves and our communities powers a new Caring Economy. Our shared vision is to give every community around the world a HUG.”
“Healthcare is decentralizing, so why not decentralize the data that drives it?” asks Pierre Vigilance, MD, MPH, Vice President of Population Health and Social Impact at ConsenSys Health. “Our platform provides the next generation infrastructure to make that possible, enabling vulnerable populations to permit their health data (clinical and non-clinical) to be shared with a range of health and human service partners. We see this as critical to the process of removing the barriers to health and providing the infrastructure necessary for communities to thrive. Operationally, HUGs will provide innovative health promotion tools designed and co-created with underserved populations by default, putting them at the front of the line and disrupting the traditional practice of innovating for affluent populations first.”
More announcements on the first HUGs will be made in Q1, 2022.
About ConsenSys Health
ConsenSys Health is building next generation critical infrastructure for healthcare and life sciences. Their Elevated Compute™ platform leverages decentralized AI, blockchain and confidential computing to accelerate the deployment of applications that address chronic industry pain points. A founding member of the Decentralized Trials & Research Alliance, ConsenSys Health is focused on privacy-preserving clinical trials matching, e-consent, and precision medicine applications. They partner with advocacy groups to prioritize enhanced wellbeing of veterans and underserved populations.
About the Digital Health Institute for Transformation (DHIT)
DHIT is a non-profit education and research institute supporting communities through the process of digital health transformation. They collaborate with leading academic institutions, associations, and industry on a mission to maximize health in underserved communities across the nation and beyond by providing equal access to global advancements in care.