The province of Zhejiang in China has processed almost $6 billion USD using a blockchain medical billing platform. The announcement was made on QNSB, a local publication, which reported that after a successful pilot last year, the service is now being used to schedule visits for doctors, getting prescriptions and keeping and viewing their bills.
So far, the platform already has 480 medical institutions on it, according to the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Finance. Officials said that the technology that powers the whole system was created by a tech subsidiary of Alibaba, Ant Financial.
The local reports indicate that the service was created as a way to reduce the time that is needed for the verification of insurance, which made the process 96 times faster when compared to before. Insurance claims procedures were also diminished in time, going from around 12 days to be resolved to only three hours.
Jinse Finance, another Chinese publication, published that the platform was first implemented in Taizhou, a city in the province. A partnership was launched initially with eleven hospitals and it was so successful that the project was scaled soon after.
Now, even Alipay, the payment arm of Alibaba, is a part of the project. While Ant Financial provides the underlying technology for the system, Alipay is set to use its system to handle some of the payments which are made using the platform.
In related news, Ant Financial is starting to test its own platform alone as well. Called Ant Blockchain Open Alliance, the goal of the platform is to support businesses that want to expand their services with low costs.
