It was my typical annual check-up. I knew what to expect. After all, it's the same routine every year.
"Any changes (in your health) since last year?" the doctor asked.
I had gone through a lot in the past year. We all have.
Like most people, my anxiety levels had heightened after the pandemic, I felt disconnected from the world around me, and at times, dealt with bouts of depression.
That was normal, though, right?
"Not really," I responded. "Still trying to eat as healthy as possible, I exercise a few times per week, and started meditating."
"That's great to hear!" the doctor replied. "Let me order your blood work and I'll follow up with you based on those results."
So I signed a few documents and left the doctor's office.
Fast forward to a few months later and my entire "health" had been reduced down to a phone call about my concerning blood sugar along with informal instructions to "eat less red meat."
This process is all too common. Even for those that proactively keep up with their health, there aren't many high-quality easily-scalable options for engaging with the employed doctors that are best positioned to keep us healthy.
Sure - you can wear technology or place a few stickers on your body and look at numbers all day, but that only gets you so far.
But how do these attempts to be more engaged with your health on your own terms even get logged? How do they enter into this health record that the doctor seems to clutch so tightly?
The short answer is that they don't. The health record that our doctors leverage does not do a sufficient job at capturing the entire spectrum of well-being.
What about your mental health?
What about your self-awareness?
What about your connections?
Despite the deeply concerning mental health crisis that was exacerbated by the pandemic, we still don't have a workable solution to bridge our traditional health records with our individual sovereignty.
If we modify our eating habits, begin to meditate, track our vitals through an app, or even microdose, how are we able to truly understand our health outcomes?
Rather than analyzing in isolation, the well-being spectrum must be weighted holistically in a way that connects the body with the mind and emphasizes the importance of understanding one's self.
The solution is clearly a self-custody mental health log.
Soul bound tokens authenticate your attributes.
Decentralized data storage that only the patient controls gives the power back to the people.
On-chain health transactions that only you (and your health network) have access to provide honesty and transparency, which pave the way to deeper understanding.
Finally, this single "source of truth" infrastructure begins to break down the inefficient foundations that health insurance was built upon, removes the many unnecessary middlemen, and opens up a brand new economy for shared communities to take advantage of in order to reduce the cost of healthcare over time.
The technology exists. The future is here. Now we just need to expose the world to how having an onchainmind can improve their lives.
