Health insurance has the capability of improving the health status and reducing mortality of a population, but in Kenya, a lower-middle income country, citizens are dying prematurely due to lack of access to affordable healthcare. With the government unable to provide universal healthcare for its citizens and insurance policy scarce, poor citizens are forced to pay out of pocket to access healthcare services. Snark Health, a blockchain-powered patient-doctor benefit management platform, was built to increase healthcare accessibility and affordability in Kenya.

Founded in 2018 by Hank Selke and Edwin Lubanga, Snark Health provides telemedicine services to people with little to no insurance packages. “The available (telemedicine) models shift risks to patients without paying attention to their financial status,” Lubanga said in an interview with NODO. Lubanga explains that the platform can be used as a telemedicine tool similar to existing telemedicine apps. But it does a lot more. Patients who cannot afford to pay for doctor appointments can trade their data in exchange for free consultations. The platform sells the generated data and shares the earnings with patients and doctors.

The platform introduced the Hippocratic Coin (HTC), a savings vehicle tied to healthcare data that can be used to pay for future medical expenses. Patients get HTC as sign-up bonuses, for filling out their body mass index (BMI) and updating their records. Currently, transactions are conducted using fiat currency, but they plan to incorporate cryptocurrency in the future. “Even though the coin’s design, minting, and distribution are completed, the coin is not publicly activated yet because we are looking for liquidity providers,” Lubanga told NODO.

As a patient-doctor benefit management platform, Snark Health ensures that all parties on its platform get a piece of the pie. When doctors treat patients for free they get 90% of the proceeds from data sales; in scenarios where Snark Health foots the bill it gets 90%, of which 10% to the doctors to incentivize them to write accurate data; and patients who foot their bills but still want to sell their data, all parties gets a third each.

Snark Health does not bother patients about the underlying blockchain technology, since many of them do not understand the concept of a blockchain. Instead, by default, patients will interface with fiat, linked to their HTC wallet. But for technology-savvy youths, an addition of blockchain technology can be engaging. “The aspiration behind creating an extra layer for the crypto technology was to attract the youth, who are trading on different platforms, [but] when you tell them to contribute every month to their healthcare they say [they] never get sick,” Lubanga explained. Lubanga envisions that when the HTC coin is live, it will trade on various exchanges and grow its value organically. “So, to encourage the youth, we will give them a wallet with HTCs they can trade with it, and when they make some money, they can withdraw up to a limit but a portion permanently stays here so that when they get sick one day, they can convert it [to fiat] and pay for healthcare expenses.”

Due to the sensitive nature of healthcare data, Snark Health ensures data privacy and security through collaboration with regulatory bodies such as the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) in Kenya.

According to Lubanga, Big Pharma, and drug distributors are interested in purchasing analytics from the platform, “Let's say you want to know how anti-malaria drugs are moving in the country, Snark health can tell you we have been having a concentration from this x region. So, you may want to start selling from that (region),” Lubanga detailed.

Lubanga explained that Snark Health provides selling insights and analytics based on data from healthcare and non-healthcare sources. They have customers including the government, and during the COVID pandemic, they provided valuable information to the government on why Kenyans were not visiting hospitals.

Lubanga revealed that they plan to use blockchain technology for privacy and tracking purposes. And intends to incorporate supply chain monitoring by working with manufacturers to track drugs from the point of manufacturing to their entry into the whole pharmaceutical industry. “We want to maximize as much as we can for the blockchain side,” he said. According to Lubanga, depending on the evolution of the coin and the adoption of blockchain transactions, the platform can become useful for speedy cross-border transactions. “So, anyone across the world can use Snark Health to consult. I can be in Spain and talk to a Kenyan doctor, (because) I'm paying with Hippocratic coins. I don't have healthcare insurance in Nigeria, but I can talk to a doctor in Nigeria and pay the doctor.”

Lubanga also mentions their achievements so far, including filing patents and obtaining governmental certification as a data processor. Snark Health currently has over 4300 patients and 300 doctors on its platform; and a growing partnership with 60 community health volunteers—who onboard rural areas dwellers without smartphones. The company has also secured a partnership with two Level 5 hospitals—big teaching and referral hospitals in Kenya— by building for them, a patient records management dashboard. Lubanga confirms Snark Health’s availability on USSD and Android, alongside plans for an iOS app.

According to Lubanga, Snark Health’s next plans include following up with the ODPC to ensure compliance with privacy regulations, seeking investment from crypto-focused investors to activate the Hippocratic Coin and activate the Health Savings Vehicle, and partnering with hospitals to negotiate discounts for patients and lower healthcare costs. In the coming months, the platform expects to onboard an additional 100 hospitals to increase the number of healthcare providers and acquire more data customers to purchase the data generated on the platform. Finally, they intend to expand their team and raise funds to support the scaling and growth of the platform.