Frank Ricotta and Brian Jackson, President, Burst IQ
We live in an era of data abundance. And like many industries, healthcare is experiencing a data explosion. It is anticipated that 2,314 exabytes of healthcare data were generated globally in 2020, which is an enormous amount. In fact, 1.2 billion Clinical documents are created annually in the US alone, and this amount is increasing at a rate of 48% every year. But despite the abundance of health data from disparate sources including EHRs, mobile devices, and wearables, the fundamental quality, safety, and cost challenges of providing care has not been resolved. This is because data from these sources is largely siloed – with limited or no integration with other data sources.
Thus to break down these silos and enable health data to be connected on a global scale, BurstIQ, a leading provider of blockchain-enabled data solutions for the healthcare industry came into existence. The innovative company believes that data holds the power to unleash our collective human intelligence and it can enable new medical breakthroughs, more intelligent health products, better coordination, and truly individualized care. Thus, BurstIQ was founded on the principle that every human has a right to data dignity and that they should receive value in return for sharing their data.
Solving Data Exchange in a Private and Compliant Manner
BurstIQ actually began its journey with the premise of privacy and data privacy. BurstIQ co-founders Frank Ricotta and Brian Jackson were tired of their data being used without their consent, so they challenged the team to leverage blockchain technologies for the safe handling and sharing of sensitive human data. As a result, the LifeGraph® platform was purpose-built with blockchain principles adapted to meet the unique needs of healthcare data, including privacy, compliance, and the ability to share safely at scale. BurstIQ works to solve data exchange in a private and compliant manner. As it gained momentum in the market by helping its customers securely connect and share data, it had to pivot to address the COVID-19 pandemic. “We took the opportunity to create a collaborative research network and health app accelerator to help companies bring vaccine and testing solutions to market quickly and compliantly. From this, we saw an opportunity to use data in a more meaningful way and connect businesses to the deep human insights they need to deliver hyper-personalized solutions. And that’s what made LifeGraph what it is today,” opines Frank.
The LifeGraph® Accelerator Program allows businesses to test drive the tech for 60 days so they can connect data, enable safe data sharing, and provide a single source of truth for trustworthy AI and machine learning. The platform includes application accelerators that streamline the creation of user-friendly interfaces, data dictionaries, and connections between data from various sources. The platform is REST API-based to connect to the features applications need, such as billing, data visualization, and more. Ultimately, they get a full-functioning, compliant health application ready for real-world deployment.
A First-Of-Its-Kind Web3 Data Platform
While most data management platforms control database access, where and how the data may be processed, and standard encryption techniques to hide sensitive information such as identity, LifeGraph applies privacy-enhancing technology to each data asset to ensure data security. “It’s what we call smart data. Smart data is a data construct that fuses attributes such as metadata, edge relationships, ownership, and permissions into a new data object that is cryptographically signed and attested. These attributes give smart data context that can be used in real-time to configure and drive processing system behavior. Smart data offers a real-time logic plug-in that drives the behavior of each data object independently,” elucidates Frank. “With smart data, the whole system can learn, adapt, and optimize far more quickly than traditional models. With the explosive growth in data volumes, the deep intelligence companies are trying to glean from that data, and the broader shift into Web3, smart data thrives where traditional data models have faltered,” he adds.
Today, BurstIQ proudly partners with health tech, health and life sciences, and health workforce companies. LifeGraph empowers nurses to collect and share career information, find learning pathways for career advancement and connect with nurses to build a sense of community. This will streamline recruiting and onboarding and help employers with nurse retention.
Continues Solving Healthcare Issues Using Better Data and Deeper Insights
Since its inception, BurstIQ’s mission has been to make the world a healthier place. And it believes that data plays a pivotal role in making progress toward this goal every day. “Data is an expression of the human experience and we must use data to gain a deeper understanding of every human. But, we must do so in a trustworthy way that returns value to the humans who generate that data. It is our responsibility to use this data to uncover insights that lead to more meaningful digital experiences and to connect people in ways that inspire movements that disrupt conventional thinking and create real change. For all of these reasons, LifeGraph was purpose-built to maintain data privacy and promote data dignity,” explains Frank.
Forging ahead, BurstIQ continues partnering with visionaries to solve healthcare’s biggest issues using better data and deeper insights. Working alongside companies with a true passion for change and a drive to make it happen, BurstIQ is helping them get more value from data and to build trust with the people they serve through secure, hyper-personalized digital experiences through LifeGraph. With this platform, a state Medicaid agency is accelerating its digital transformation and using data to capture a complete picture of all the patients in the plan. “This first-of-its-kind Medicaid data unification will help analysis across the entire patient population. The data ecosystem will help them proactively manage fraud, waste, and abuse as well as population health at scale,” affirms Frank.
A global payment processor that wants to gain insights from health data without ever accessing Personal Health Information or Personally Identifiable Information can also leverage proven loyalty programs to match patients with incentives, encouraging medication adherence to help patients stay healthier without violating their right to privacy. Pharmaceutical companies will also benefit from this because, with a value-based care model, they are reimbursed when their therapeutics have proven efficacy.