Hello POA enthusiasts and professionals,
My name is Kristina Yevseyeva. My last name is not an output of a hash function, I promise 
My academic and professional background is in engineering for safety-critical systems. I have a B.S. in Computer Engineering and an M.S. in Software Engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Iāve started my professional career as a software engineer at a medical company creating/documenting architecture, use cases, needs, requirements, design, and finally implementing and verifying SOAP web-services for a distributed network of > 200 SQL-based servers located in hospitals that communicate with a central server. At the central server product usage data from the hospitals can be analyzed and visualized by customers and mined for internal business intelligence and product improvements purposes. I also worked on integrating existing products with external healthcare providers over an HL7 interface, which is intended to transfer clinical and administrative data. These projects gave me the first real-world exposure to identifying and solving problems around scaleability, availability, cybersecurity and privacy when handling PHI. Recently, Iāve been working on the surgical navigation system that uses image guidance to enable surgeons perform minimally invasive cranial, spinal, and other procedures with a greater confidence around patient safety and clinical outcomes. Some of my projects involve big data and deep learning to improve and expand the systemās functionality.
Iāve been interested and fascinated by the potential of blockchain-based technology pretty much since its immersion. In my opinion, the current blockchain giants are only scratching the surface of the full potential of this technology when applied to different industries proliferated with middlemen, lack of transparency and long-gone trust. Initially, Iāve come across POA Network when looking into ETHDenver 2018. Unfortunately, stars did not align for me to attend, but Iāve found the POA consensus model elegant in its simplicity, efficiency, and scaleability without killing the planet, which made me research it further.
As trust in traditional intermediaries is declining around the world, and bureaucratic and security issues make regular headlines, the fundamental reason why these intermediaries exist becomes a big question. Before I get myself in trouble, Iāll just say that blockchain-based solutions may be an answer to many existing problems in every domain of the socio-economic life. So far Iāve been a mere observer, waiting for the right opportunity to apply the blockchain technology to a real-world problem. Being closely involved in the healthcare industry, I see numerous use cases for applying blockchain, smart contracts, and the POA consensus model:
Health insurance in the U.S. seems one of the most broken use cases where the cost of a service and the details of that service are not fully known to the consumer until weeks or months after the service is provided. Furthermore, the overhead of a transaction going through a health insurance company is often quoted at ~15%, while, say, an overhead of a transaction at a grocery store is ~1-2%. Such inefficiencies and lack of transparency could be solved by using smart contracts with POA validator pool of certified medical professionals balanced with representatives from other publicly certified professions.
Getting authorized access to a patientās medical records (even your own!) in a timely manner also seems like a nearly impossible task. Imagine the world where a patient and authorized physicians can have real-time access to patientās medical records that can also be synced with patient monitoring devices. Now imagine a single repository of such medical records, where PHI is encrypted using one-way hash algorithm to maintain privacy. Depending on consent from a patient, his/her data can be made available to a research group to conduct large scale studies to inform and come up with better therapies and drugs or detect patterns in drug interactions. Again, medical professionals can serve as validators or a subset of these.
To conclude, I hope to become a valuable contributor to the POA network in the capacity of a validator and beyond as I truly believe itās a ground-breaking technology and I would like to help shape it.
CO Notary Public ID - 20184021418
Commission Expiration Date - 05/21/22
Verification Link - https://www.sos.state.co.us/notary/pages/public/verifyNotary.xhtml
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinayevseyeva/
P.S. Congrats to the development and test team on the live demo of the POA network bridge - thatās a huge leap forward!
(who has been a great help for on-boarding).