Project Brief:
The recent Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted to us the vast inequalities that persist in the society where the pandemic has impacted the poorer regions much more. The project is to be done to enable more people access to affordable healthcare, which is done so through the distribution of wealth from the rich to the poor through voluntary donations.
Vision: Achieve greater equality by allowing donations to reach those in need.
Mission: Ensure accessibility of healthcare for all through donations directed at those at need
Main Content:
Although there is a presence of financial assistance for hospital bills (e.g. Medifund and Hospital Financial Assistance), we understand that many people have problems paying for their hefty hospital bills. Besides that, there is also a problem of donations reaching the wrong people for the wrong purpose.
Our solutions to encounter the issues are employing a secured social platform (e.g. Secure Scuttlebud) where patients in need of funding for their immediate hospitalization bills can upload their issue they are facing and the bill payable onto the platform for the sake of partial transparency. We understand that some information on the patient’s condition is private and can be sensitive hence do not render full transparency. The beneficiaries can only post on the platform after being approved by the hospitals they were at.
Our application will be similar to a peer-to-peer donation platform (e.g. gofundme, kickstarter), where donors can choose to donate to the patient of their choice. We understand that there is a potential information asymmetry as some patients might have a better story and some don’t resulting in the donors potentially choosing the more convincing plea. Hence, we will only allow a standard information reporting (name, age, family income, condition, hospital bill and donation progress) for the start. Some donors might not have a direct beneficiary they would like to help, can instead stake a certain amount of money which will then be converted to SMTs and stored in the application’s general wallet which can be used by hospitalized patients for entertainment, food and many more in collaboration with Meshbox. The purpose of providing entertainment to patients is to divert their attention away from pain by engaging them into enjoyable activities.
Furthermore, SmartMesh Blockchain will be used in keeping records of data as it creates a unique ‘code’ for each donation and every posting of need. It shows transparency on the identity of the donor and the recipient. As a result, we know where and who the money is going to, and therefore it prevents fraud.
Team:
Timothy Tang Yew Yik , Hello, i am an undergraduate Economics and Finance student from RMIT.
Vanessa Voon, Hello, I’m a sophomore from Singapore Management University majoring in Economics.
Gary Phng, Hello I am Gary, a final year Economics student from the National University of Singapore. I enjoy sharing knowledge and helping others!
