Vision

Our Vision is to Decentralize Psychiatry

The sanctity of the patient-physician relationship has been tainted by third parties incentivized to extract value at every possible step. These third parties include health insurance providers, pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy benefit managers, lobbying associations, administrative bureaucracies, corporate executives, and more recently, private equity firms offering value-based care models. This list is far from exhaustive, but speaks to the point: There are too many hands in the pot.

Consequently, physicians are forced to spend less time on patient care in order to meet the increasing demands of administrative/institutional bureaucracy. These include prior authorizations, accommodating in and out-of-network insurance status, answering to utilization reviews, and adjusting diagnoses and treatments to comply with medical billing criteria - to name just a few nuances. This drastically reduces time spent with patients, and severely compromises the quality of care provided. When did we lose our grasp over our profession?

Furthermore, profit-oriented business models have promoted the emergence of mid-level providers lobbying for independent practicing status. Recently, medical specialties find themselves besieged by these efforts while patients are the ones who ultimately pay the price.

Zooming out, the truth is distasteful: Patients have become a vehicle for value to flow into profit-oriented businesses and systems. Dialysis is but one example, and a microcosm.

Though the entire field of Medicine has fallen prey to this reality, our focus begins with Psychiatry. Unlike the relatively objective diagnoses and treatments for medical conditions, psychiatric disorders are largely subjective and lack inter-rater reliability. This means these tasks cannot be automated or delegated to under-qualified personnel, without imposing direct costs to the patient in the pursuit of monetary bottom-line efficiency. I.e. this is partly why many psychiatric patients are often misdiagnosed and medicated heavily.

The foundation of Psychiatry is rooted in empirical subjectivity, but the race for objectifying this field has already begun. If technology is going to accelerate and facilitate this shift, then it behooves us to embrace the change lest we become displaced by it.

This is where Distributed Ledger Technology intersects with Neuromodulation. DLT is a powerful tool to program system-wide incentives.

We aim to create a mental healthcare system which is transparent, accessible, and equal for everyone. Let's build this world, together.

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