CHME Exchange

The CHME may be the first initiative to employ a Health Success Points Card, based on a local currency secured by blockchain to enhance community health, wellness, and resilience.

The CHME may be the first initiative to employ a Health Success Points Card, based on a local currency secured by blockchain to enhance community health, wellness, and resilience. The closest precedent is the Fuerai Kippu, a local currency in Japan to motivate compassionate care for the elderly. The following is an excerpt from Bernard Lietaer’s important book, Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity.

“The Fureai Kippu has been operating successfully in Japan since 1995. It’s an all-electronic complementary currency, which originally began as a system for providing health care for the elderly. The system of Fureai Kippu, or “caring relationship tickets,” allows individuals to earn credits by caring for a local elderly person or anyone in need of care or assistance. The basic unit of account is an hour of service. These Fureai Kippu can be saved for the individual’s own use in the future, or transferred to someone of their choice, typically a parent or family member who lives elsewhere in the country and who needs similar help. Currently, some 374 non-profit organizations in Japan are issuing and participating in exchanging Fureai Kippu across the country through two computerized clearing houses.”

“A surprising part of the project has been that the elderly tend to prefer the services provided by people paid in Fureai Kippu over those paid in yen. Those surveyed all agreed that to convert this community service to yen would dilute the sense of community and genuine care based on compassion.”

“In Japan, the number of elderly people aged 65 or over surpassed 30 million for the first time in 2012, accounting for as much as 24 per cent of the population – in contrast to children aged 14 and under which decreased to a record low of 13 per cent (Japan Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry). Japan’s government faces taking strong measures to tackle the consequences of its aging society, with a sharp rise in welfare costs and medical care demands forecast in coming years combined with a drop-in workforce and national tax revenues.”

“Here is an agreement within a community to use something other than national currency as a medium of payment to solve a social problem. Not only does it improve the quality of life of the elderly, it creates a resource flow and is a wonderful solution based on trust, cooperation, and compassion that does not rely on government subsidies or bureaucracy, expensive insurance, or even national endorsements.”

Like the Fureai Kippu system the CHME Health Success Points Card (HSPC) is intended not only to motivate specific positive behaviors closely associated with recognized measurable health outcomes. It is also a means to engage an increasingly broad range of stakeholders within a community around, one might argue, its most precious public good: health, vitality, and wellness.

The CHME HSPC is easy to initiate. It requires no government permit or approval. It is not a security. As any currency the most important threshold condition is to establish its basic value. In operational terms a certain number of HSPs are authorized—for example, 1 million and a par value set, say 10 cents per HSP. The next step is to identify local stakeholders who care about the health of the community and want to “play”. These can be foundations, local merchants and service providers, philanthropists, or government agencies. These “charter sponsors” agree to back the currency either in the form of purchasing it, or being willing to permit the holder to redeem the HSPs in exchange for specific designated goods and services. In consideration for their support, the stakeholders participate in a number of benefit streams. Not only are they widely recognized by the CHME as a “Community Health Champion and Ambassador” (which for vendors and merchants can translate directly into new business), the stakeholders will retain the redeemed HSPs which are transferred for their own use, whether for purchase of other goods and services or donation.

The CHME HSPC system embeds a special accounting for selfless acts of paying forward that help to enhance the health, wellness, and resilience of others. The HSP algorithm is written in such a manner that the more selfless the action, the more HSPs are earned. The more players who enter the Exchange and the broader the number of specific health challenges, the greater the velocity of the currency. The HSPC is an ideal application of blockchain technology, helping to ensure the transparency, accountability, traceability, and integrity of each smart transaction.

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