Last week, the blockchain health credentialing platform ProCredEx announced it raised $3.5 million in seed funding in a round led by Spectrum Health Ventures. ProCredEx offers a blockchain-enabled marketplace to enable credentialing organizations to share, exchange and monetize credential verification data.
Other investors in the seed round include Martin Ventures, The Hardenbergh Group, Florida Funders, and several strategic healthcare executives. Additionally, ProCredEx said it has entered into a partnership with R3 to build its credentialing marketplace on the Corda enterprise blockchain.
Healthcare credentialing is an essential step for onboarding new practitioners and other professionals. Currently, each organization, such as a hospital, insurer, laboratory has to independently verify the qualifications, experience, and other details of a doctor or a nurse. Due to heavy dependence on paper and manual labor, the process takes months to complete, and hospitals lose out on revenue while also spending time and money on the verification of details.
By leveraging blockchain, this process could be simplified to save time and money. The immutable nature of blockchain gives credentialing companies and other healthcare providers a trusted source of information, and they can cut down on manual communication to verify details.
Launched two years ago, ProCredEx was initiated by Hashed Health and Tenon Consulting Solutions. It connects with existing credentialing infrastructures of any organization, thus allowing them to share verified data and earn revenue.
“ProCredEx provides these individuals (credentialing professionals) with a secure tool to both immediately acquire this information from accredited exchange members and resell the data they have worked to verify themselves to other organizations needing this information,” said Matt Cox, Chief Financial Officer of Spectrum Health.
“Credentialing stands out as an ideal fit because the use of the technology allows us to solve trust issues related to verification of information, while also enabling an innovative, simplifying business model,” said John Bass, CEO of Hashed Health.
Abbas Ali, Head of Digital Identity at new partner R3, commented: “Digital identity is one of the most important use-cases we’re developing and using blockchain for digital provider credentialing will allow us to create new, more efficient business models for verifying credentials. “
He continued: “We are also actively involved in the self-sovereign identity community and believe that the future of credentialing and identity management is headed towards a world where users own and control access to their own identities.”
ProCredEx is a high-profile initiative and has received interest from various organizations. Last year, National Government Services, Spectrum Health, WellCare, Accenture, and The Hardenbergh Group announced they were using the ProCredEx for healthcare credentialing.
Meanwhile, Aetna, Humana, and UnitedHealth Group are part of the Synaptic Health Alliance, which is working on a blockchain-based provider directory.
UAE’s Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) has launched a blockchain platform to record and share the assessment information of health professionals.
In the U.S., MD-Staff has launched a credentialing solution called Checksome, which verifies data from organizations such as the National Practitioner Data Bank, the Office of Inspector General and System for Award Management (SAM).
