The National Group Purchasing of Healthcare Resources Platform (the “Platform”) and an associated research laboratory were recently established with the intention of fundamentally reducing the procurement cost of the healthcare products and services based on big data technology. Co-chaired by Senior Senator Sir Zheng Gongcheng, Professor of Renmin University of China, a member of standing committee of The Thirteenth National People’s Congress (NPC), the Platform was jointly established by the China Association of Social Security (CAOSS), the Social Medical Insurance Bureau of Heilongjiang Province and THEKEY. On the 19th of August the official kick-off meeting was held in Beijing, featuring officials from across both the newly established National Healthcare Security Bureau and other relevant departments within the Human Resources and Social Security, Social Insurance and other vested interest social organizations and enterprises.
The August 19, 2018 Kick-off Meeting for National Group Purchasing of Healthcare
Resources Platform
The recent box office success of the Chinese movie Dying to Survive, featuring the real-life story of Lu Yong, a Chinese leukemia patient who smuggled inexpensive but unproven cancer medicines into China from India for 1,000 Chinese cancer sufferers in 2004, has sparked a national debate about the cost of healthcare products and services for the Chinese population. Even Chinese Premier Li Keqiang cited the film in an appeal to regulators to “speed up price cuts for cancer drugs”.
China’s Basic Medical Insurance System has serves over 1.4 billion people, by far the world’s largest health insurance program. In 2017 the overall expenditure for Basic Medical Insurance for the Chinese population was $220 billion USD. The continued growth of this cost increasingly signified an urgent need to create a national group purchasing platform designed to systematically both to control costs and improve the efficiency of China’s medical insurance funds.
Giving this background, the Laboratory of the National Group Purchasing of Healthcare Resources was established with the above-mentioned groups as partners, with THEKEY serving as the exclusive technical provider. Dr. Yidong King from THEKEY gave a speech during this initial launch meeting introducing the rationale and the logic of the Platform construction.
According to Dr. King, the Platform is being designed as an exclusive E-commerce platform comprehensively supported by the healthcare data collected across all of the Chinese basic medical insurance agencies with the intention both to enhance the efficiency of medical insurance fund while also increasing the general population’s greater health. Facilitated by the two engines – “Accurate Pricing” and “Bidding / Purchasing” – the Platform has been designed to solve issues relating to healthcare resources procurement while also supporting more efficient real-time evaluation and supervision of the overall purchasing process. The Platform will provide integral and full support to the purchase of all healthcare resources, such as medical products, medical services and relevant knowledge. Available both on PC and in the form of mobile application, the Platform will simultaneously serve medical insurance agencies, designated hospitals and pharmacies, individuals and enterprises.
The Platform will gradually adopt blockchain technology in support of tracing and tracking drugs and medical consumables; facilitating highly efficient peer-to-peer money transactions and data transmission among stakeholders. Identity verification technology for individuals, enterprises such as THEKEY’s proprietary Blockchain based Dynamic Multi-Dimensional Identification (BDMI) will be applied across the near future to ensure patients’ safety, data security and medical healthcare insurance fund payment security.
Dr. Yidong King from THEKEY delivering a keynote speech
The Platform aroused heated discussion among the attendees. Dr. King stated that THEKEY is enjoying significant favorable conditions by which to successfully construct and launch the Platform, including the facts that:
- The newly founded State Healthcare Security Bureau (SHSB) of China has realized the aggregation of the power and rights from healthcare related authorities, with its functionality covering all segments that group purchasing will involve, such as the pricing of drugs and medical consumables, policy making, etc. This forms a solid foundation and provides an unparalleled opportunity for the research and the construction of the group purchasing platform.
- The tremendous volume of medical insurance data accumulated by relevant authorities is essential in optimizing the Platform by supervising and managing the overall procedures of the group purchasing platform, such as planning, pricing, purchasing, delivery and the use of the healthcare resources.
- The medical insurance payment process of all existing platforms should be seamlessly connected with this new Platform, particularly as relates to the medicine purchasing segment, to realize bulk purchase which will fundamentally cut the drug price.
- The existing medical insurance policies should positively interact with the Platform. By regulating the hospitals and the medical treatments of physicians, the procurement behavior of the hospital will also be influenced.
- Experience and technologies of existing purchasing platforms could be great potential help to the construction and operation of this new unified Group Purchasing Platform.
- Supply chain finance such as that which the Platform promises would be great incentive to pharmaceutical companies by simultaneously enhancing both sales and payment collection, reducing costs and while increasing budgets for research and development as well as the production of the medical products.
- The Group Purchasing Platform has received great approval and support from officials and experts across both national and provincial medical insurance authorities, and anticipates a number of provinces will join the pilot program in the future.
Catherine Li, CEO of THEKEY in heat discussion with officials
“The Group Purchasing Platform is very insightful, and has the potential to provide a fundamental solution to the existing problems encountered across China’s the healthcare industry. The kick-off meeting was a good start, while the further development of the Platform calls for more ideas and efforts.” Senior Senator Sir Zheng Gongcheng commented during the conference.
Senior Senator Sir Zheng Gongcheng giving a speech
Today most global public blockchain programs mainly focus on token issuance and transactions related to cryptocurrency. Blockchain technology can only realize its true social, economic and commercial value once it plays an important and irreplaceable role in addressing fundamental social issues related to national economies and the people’s livelihood. By this National Group Purchasing Platform for Healthcare Resources and the associated Research into Social Insurance Blockchain Applications in June of 2018 in cooperation with Chinese government, THEKEY is achieving significant milestones in its implementation of blockchain across the healthcare industry. THEKEY is providing a variety of innovation in service to increasing the overall quality of China’s healthcare services by enhancing efficiencies, saving manpower and lowering costs.
About THEKEY
THEKEY is a decentralized ecosystem of Identity Verification (IDV) tools integrating national big-data and the blockchain. THEKEY’s project team is now developing its identification verification (IDV) tool with blockchain using its proprietary Dynamic Multi-dimension Identification (BDMI) platform, uniquely using Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that has been exclusively authorized by the Chinese Government. THEKEY token (TKY) is the only method by which to settle smart contracts signed between all participants across THEKEY Ecosystem. THEKEY testnet was launched in May 2018, and its mainnet is scheduled to be released at the end of this year. TKY is currently tradable across a number of exchange platforms such as HitBTC, Bit-Z, KuCoin, Lbank, Coinrail and LATOKEN.
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