【Web3 meets medication】Medication traceability application “DrugN” adopted for local government support projects

【Web3 meets medication】Healthcare against the backdrop of various social issues and challenges, "DrugN" from Japan aims to create an optimal healthcare environment that motivates patients to feel more positive by implementing “incentive healthcare apps” by accelerating their own self-esteem and relationship with healthcare professionals. Users can use it on a “completely anonymous” basis, to comply with a personal data protection act as a global standard for the SDGs. This is a medication record traceability application that solves industry problems with user behaviour DX, which has been adopted as a local government support project.

A health life-log app with elements of Medical-fi, Social-fi and Game-fi that encourages and incentivizes the correct use of prescribed medication with anonymous use and no registration of personal data. Through anonymous medication records, we are trying to solve social issues with the full involvement of users, medical institutions and related companies.

What kind of service does “DrugN” provide?

DrugN aims to support patients in their efforts to lead a healthy life. Patients can be affected both physically and mentally when they have a difficult-to-treat disease, or having some restrictions in their lives due to their illness and when they are distressed by their illness. The idea is that this would be one of the cues for these patients to have their life with a positive attitude through the service. Therefore, this app has a target to turn their health behaviour into value by introducing a system that allows them to earn points and crypto assets(tokens), the timing of medication, each time patients take pills, will be a trigger of transaction. The points and crypto assets(tokens) will not be issued indefinitely by the management, but will be targeted to properties that have value when activated by the patients themselves.

What is behind the adoption of blockchain technology?

The use of a centralised database could reduce reliability, as administrators can change data at will. Blockchain, on the other hand, is a decentralised system in which transactions are stored in the form of a series of chains, making them much harder to tamper with and allowing for a more reliable and transparent system. Blockchain also allows users to manage their own value, making the system more autonomous. Therefore, points/crypto assets (tokens) enabled by blockchain technology are seen as a suitable alternative to centralised databases.

It is encouraging to see from the Twitter feed that activated testers are sending their tokens to other self-custody wallets that we can see.

The purpose of medicines is to function in a way that creates a state of social activity through healthy living, and are tools for achieving social sustainability and development, and are only valuable if used appropriately. We believe that there is value in the appropriate use of medicines, in patients investing in their own bodies, and in a sustainable society with increased healthy life expectancy, and we are developing DrugN as a tool that can be used autonomously by patients to make this a reality. From this perspective, blockchain technology has been adopted with the aim of creating a healthcare application that is anonymous, with a point system that patients find free and enjoyable, in order to increase social sustainability.

What was the point of choosing Symbol out of several blockchains?

On the Symbol blockchain, users can participate in block validation by hosting nodes, and get rewarded which is called harvesting, and even if they don't host their node, they can participate in the process by delegating to the node, which is called delegated harvesting, and this is where the incentives come in.

At the moment, the blockchain still has some difficulties, such as the hosting nodes, the way accounts and wallets, and especially the management of private key, but Symbol has already achieved a degree of decentralisation and has two years of working history. It was also important that the origin of the Symbol blockchain NEM also had a proven history.

On the other hand, there is a concern. This is the case with other blockchains, but because the native currency of the Symbol blockchain, XYM, is used to pay for server management costs, if the price of XYM, which is used to pay the fees, goes up, the divergence in profitability may change and the costs may not be paid. In such a situation, it may be necessary to consider relocating with records on another chain, but the timing is unpredictable and therefore a concern for management.

However, Symbol has the potential to solve this problem. As mentioned above, this is a harvesting/delegated harvesting of the block validation process to keep the chain stable. If management can host their node to be delegated, management will be incentivised by that block validation and we believe this is a solution that will allow us to continue the business without being impacted to some extent by cost issues. And we are currently using our own servers on a trial basis to host our Node: https://symbol-01.drugn.life and increase our knowledge while providing node operation. In the future, we would like to achieve a certain reputation for DrugN in the Symbol blockchain ecosystem, and it would be gratifying to see if we are supported by users through delegations to our node, this is a challenging goal we think.

As the DrugN app uses Symbol, it is important that the Symbol blockchain remains in use and alive for a long time; when DrugN is used, a Symbol account is automatically created, increasing the number of users and transactions.

By using the Symbol blockchain, we can use blockchain transactions to keep historical records of medicines, and users who host the nodes and also harvesters can earn block rewards that include transaction fees. To use public blockchains, the support of investors and fan users of the chain technology is necessary for the technological development itself to be sustainable. We think that the way to support the activity and give back to the users needs careful consideration, but the DrugN team believes that the situation of Symbol in Japan, which has many enthusiastic users and community, is a very promising environment for us.

In the future, we will be working around VC to raise funds, so it will be helpful for our activities if we have the support of many users, a track record, node delegation, etc. Please continue to give us your feedback on the app. Feedback improves its potential for social implementation. Thank you for listening. Your support means a lot to us.

HealthCareGate Co., Ltd. DrugN White Paper Node : https://symbol-01.drugn.life