How Lunar New Year Inspired The World’s Most Secure Paperclip

Happy Lunar New Year!

When we introduced Document GPS we knew we needed a way to show users that this was just like the way they had always been doing things, only more secure and with more control over the process. Users needed to see in one glance they could always follow the journey of an attachment and also be in charge of who else could access the file at any point in the future.

And thus our red-orange paperclip was born.

First we started by merging the image of a standard paperclip with the idea of a map pinpoint. Right away it indicates the feature of Document GPS which shows senders a history of each time someone opens, downloads or shares their files.

Then it was a question of what color the icon should be. It had to stand out and it had to convey a sense of security. It just so happened that this process started taking place right after Lunar New Year in preparation for a launch that would happen around the time of Golden Week, another major holiday in Asia. Since not only is our co-founder originally from China but our first expansion outside the U.S. was in Japan, it felt like a perfect symbiosis to keep in mind as we developed the design.

For both holidays the colors of red are abundant along with the wishes for luck and prosperity to friends and family. When we dug into the meaning of different colors, we learned the ancient meaning from Japanese culture for the color red (or “aka”) was often used in temples to scare away evil spirits and was often associated with peace and prosperity. Even more fitting, in Kabuki theater the symbolism of red on the actors’ faces is meant to represent justice. With our vision of creating a safer #web3 world that protects people from unwanted access to their files, plus our DocuWalk solution that gives people a way to virtually negotiate a contract in a secure environment, the history of “aka” captured the vision guiding everything we have built to date.

But it needed a little something more.

Attachments inside Document GPS are essentially protected in a secure digital lockbox that you have the keys to, so our paperclip needed to emphasize the #blockchain security behind the technology.

Enter the color gold.

As soon as we added an overlay of shimmering gold to the red it popped off the screen and gave off a hint of padlocks and safety deposit boxes and the doors to a bank vault. Plus a touch of golden luck, which is why it is no surprise we quickly gained over 500 downloads in the early weeks of the launch and surpassed well over a thousand downloads soon after that, putting us in the top 20% of new extensions in the Chrome store within a month of going live.


It was our ShelterZoom mission captured in one simple button and it worked.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/document-gps/gdlobabjmjnkkiajibjhembfpgpenbep/related

The Three Problems

Real cybersecurity doesn’t cost… it pays!

In recent years, sustainability has gone from being just a social responsibility to becoming an organizational imperative for enterprises.
In fact, more than 90% of CEOs state that sustainability is a crucial factor in their companies’ success.

Join the movement and make your business more sustainable with DocumentGPS

Web3 tools put the power over personal data back in the hands of the people. It should be users who decide if they want to share their data, as well as which entities it can and cannot be shared with.

DocumentGPS gives this power back to everyone, from single users to large enterprises, everyone can have control.

Cointelegraph Highlights ShelterZoom’s Healthcare Innovations

Our solution for bringing blockchain to healthcare has been featured as the first example in this Cointelegraph article about non-crypto uses for blockchain. As the first company delivering an embedded blockchain tool to health record systems, our project with Argentina’s Policlinico Modelo lays important groundwork for setting web3 standards at a higher level for both security and ease.

The nature of our blockchain ecosystem allows providers to share records with patients and for patients to then share those records with other healthcare providers or their own family members if needed. This reduces the time for a patient to give consent for their records to be shared with other providers down from a day (or more) to a matter of minutes. The overhead costs associated with managing all the consent forms is also brought down to near-zero levels.

But what if a provider gets hacked?

Our tools provide a mini-EHR system that can kick in the moment a system is hacked and the provider needs a ‘spare tire’ so they can continue operations without an interruption in care or invoicing. Document GPS lets providers upload records as they treat patients and once the hack has been addressed those records can be integrated back into the main system.

Read more in Cointelegraph:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/3-blockchain-use-cases-far-beyond-crypto

For more information on how we solve some of healthcare’s most pressing cybersecurity problems, head to our healthcare page.

How Blockchain Can Help Solve Healthcare’s Data Ownership Dilemma

CEO Chao Cheng-Shorland wrote this op-ed for Nasdaq.

Did you know you don’t technically own your own medical records?

Each state has slightly different legal variations on the matter, but at the end of the day healthcare providers have the right of possession over patient data across the U.S. While there are many unfortunate inequalities in today’s healthcare systems, the issue of ownership of medical records affects everyone and is a major roadblock, causing a reduction in the quality of care.

Remedying our healthcare system’s shortcomings is certainly a tall task, but solving the problem that results from the lack of patient-owned medical records, and doing so at scale, is a manageable challenge because there are available technologies capable of making this possible. Everyone has grown accustomed to retail-investor questions about tangible blockchain use cases beyond the hype of products like NFTs, and this is a clear one.

Impacting the quality of healthcare

Imagine you get bloodwork done at a local hospital and the following week, when a doctor from the hospital calls you with the results, he tells you there are some troubling signs. He recommends a couple of specialist clinics with whom to follow up, but when you reach out to make an appointment they need the results from the hospital. Now you have to contact the hospital and figure out a way for them to send you a physical or electronic copy. By the time the necessary specialist clinics have the bloodwork results, critical time has passed and your condition, potentially, could have deteriorated.

Not owning one’s own medical records has a directly negative effect on the quality of care patients receive, because they need to jump through bureaucratic hurdles to get a hospital, for example, to share their medical records with a specialist’s clinic. With health data scattered across clinics, hospitals, general practitioners’ offices, and sometimes even digital health apps or portals, patients struggle to promptly provide a new specialist or new family doctor with a reasonable medical summary.

The easiest way to overcome these obstacles is to enable patient control over their own medical data. In 2021, nearly 90 percent of physician offices in the U.S. had already adopted an electronic health record (EHR) system. While EHRs are certainly more convenient when compared to their manilla folder predecessors, they tend to create three-way complications and disputes between EHR vendors, medical practices, and patients over data ownership.

As a result, confusion over ownership and access to medical records remains a sticking point to fixing something that is clearly broken, or at best, not working nearly as efficiently as it could. However challenging it may be, healthcare providers across the U.S., and ideally the world, should work to establish a standard for granting patients control of their medical records.

The case for blockchain in healthcare

Blockchain technology is the most ideal tool for giving patients ownership over their medical records. But more importantly, it empowers patients with the confidence to pursue the best course of action when it comes to quality medical care. After the recent downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, many in traditional tech might see blockchain as toxic because of its association with the crypto industry. But blockchain as a technology offers unique benefits for industries outside of crypto or finance, especially as it relates to ownership of data.

By nature blockchain’s ledger is permanent with an unalterable history of transactions. This transparency makes it the best route toward empowering patients to take control of their own health data, yet all the while keeping patient records private and secure. By leveraging blockchain technology, hospitals, clinics, and healthcare providers will be able to improve the quality of care by simply making communication between health institutions smoother and faster.

Using blockchain to give patients ownership of their own records would be extremely popular and would lead to nothing short of an industry-wide revolution. Making this happen on a global scale would be quite the undertaking, but there are blockchain tools and platforms already available that can be leveraged by hospitals, healthcare providers, and private practices to get the ball rolling.

With blockchain technology tokenizing patient records, providing irrefutable ownership and unprecedented levels of security, healthcare providers of all types will be able to spend less time on bureaucratic tasks and dedicate more time to providing patient care.

Investing in solutions that leverage blockchain’s ability to provide transparent, indisputable ownership, and permissioned access of medical records, will lead to improved quality of care. Over time this investment will benefit patients’ health which in turn benefits the entire healthcare system, saving on costs down the line—think of patient ownership as a form of preventive care. Together, blockchain technology and healthcare providers, with a bit of innovation, can usher in a new age of patient-first care. 

For more information on how we solve some of healthcare’s most pressing cybersecurity problems, head to our healthcare page.