Stephanie So said blockchain has not lived up to its promise. It is one of the reasons she founded Geeq in 2017.
“Ten years ago, there was a lot of hype about this new kind of data technology — mostly it was in payments,” she said. “[Blockchain] was going to be a way for everybody to transact peer to peer, which means sending payments from one person directly to another without going to a bank.”
She continued, “The promise then was that every business process could benefit from going peer to peer…. That didn’t pan out.”
Nashville-based company Geeq is one of 17 tech startups chosen to be a part of Nashville Entrepreneur Center’s Project Healthcare accelerator program lasting from January through June this year. So spoke with the Post ahead Project Healthcare’s Thursday panel event.
So thinks of Geeq as the “next generation” of blockchain technology. The software works in tandem with health care databases to validate and protect patient information shared across systems within a hospital while keeping a secure record of transactions.
Google, for example, is not peer to peer because it can alter which results are shown to the user based on the company’s own incentives. Block chain networks are more reliable, she explained.
So said Geeq focuses first and foremost on security, looking for vulnerabilities to cyber attacks. Locally based health care system HCA Healthcare and, more recently, health tech company Change Healthcare have been targets of such attacks.
“There’s so much data coming at us from all directions, and it’s all getting collected somewhere, and it’s a little overwhelming,” So said. “Geeq … says ‘Let’s try to simplify the process.’ Not focus on everything, every possible little piece of data, because not all data is created equal. You want the ones that really matter, and for those data you need really reliable technology — it’s going to keep working, whether you get cyber attacks or not. It’s going to keep working even if someone tries to insert fake information.”
So said Geeq’s technology can work in tandem with artificial intelligence in health systems and is perhaps needed more acutely in that setting because it is critical to get patient data right. Geeq also verifies data to make sure it is accurate and the source is known. AI can come to its own conclusions based on the information it is given, while Geeq makes sure data is accurate and well sourced. The process is absolutely predictable, she said.
“With Geeq, [we can] validate the source coming from a particular authorized physician in this area. And then instead of sending it all the way through these centralized mechanisms that get attacked, or somebody may forget to fax it, it will go straight through this blockchain network and arrives safely at the other end very predictably at the other end intact,” she said.
This news is republished from another source.
