Healthbank steps into public spotlight

Healthbank is the world’s first citizen-owned health data platform. It connects data sources from all facets of the healthcare ecosystem and rewards participants. The goal of the platform described on its new website is ambitious: “Similar to VISA’s central role for financial transactions, the healthbank platform will act as an intermediary to provide a single point of transaction for health information for individuals, health care providers and researchers, thereby significantly increasing the quality of care and reducing global health care costs.”

Healthbank tries to achieve its goal with a business model driven by values:

• Trust: users manage and control their data, and they alone decide whether to share their data with health care providers, family members, researchers and others. In addition, healthbank is a citizen-owned Swiss cooperative, in which users can (but are not obligated to) become members and have voting rights.
• Neutrality: healthbank is owned by its members and not a commercial or government initiative.
• Impact will result from users having a safe, efficient and user-friendly way to store, share and access personal health data. Healthbank empowers them to better understand and manage their health, improve communications with health care providers, family members, and others in the health ecosystem, and accelerate research.

Partnership with university hospital
A few days ago healthbank has launched its website with more information about the project, the tam behind it and news. One of the important news is the signing of a partnership with UKBB (Basel University Children’s Hospital). The purposes of the partnership are to advance UKBB’s research activities, and to foster research and development in the storage, management, sharing, and utilization of healthcare related data. In a first step, UKBB and healthbank will develop joint research projects based on and utilizing the healthbank platform.

The agreement resulted from discussions between Dr. Med. Conrad E. Müller, CEO of UKBB, and Reto Schegg, CEO, and Michael Dillhyon, Board member, of healthbank.

UKBB is one of three university children’s hospitals in Switzerland, and the most modern, with a strong new focus on health data. It is a university-based competence center for pediatric and juvenile medicine, as well as for teaching and research.