COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore the importance of authoritative data and authenticated data sources in the medical field. From the early days of reporting on cases and hospitalizations around the world, individual test results reported by test providers in and outside the regular labs, to vaccine supply chains and vaccination records as shots-in-arms ramp up the health authorities, researchers, pharma industry, and regulators depend on accurate, real-time, trusted data from a vast number of diverse government and commercial organizations. And in some cases, distrust of government authorities makes it vital that the data is stored in a tamper-evident manner so that its integrity can be audited and proven.
Perhaps then
it’s not surprising that blockchain solutions have been used to enable these
capabilities. Customers have been using enterprise blockchain to address
similar requirements in financial services, supply chains, and other sectors
for a few years. Embracing the needs of the healthcare community and supporting
customer and partner deployments as part of the COVID-19 fight has been a
significant focus for the blockchain team during the pandemic – bringing our
tools to the fight and helping partners and customers make a difference. Below are some of the examples of blockchain
solutions deployed over the last 12 months.
Tamper-proof Test Results Submission
and Analysis
By the
summer of 2020 we’ve started seeing ramped up COVID-19 testing, but getting the
accurate and complete data from various testing labs on a timely basis needed
for health surveillance and pandemic mitigation efforts was a challenge. Test
data reporting by various labs, agencies, and test manufacturers, who enable
results collection, sometimes relied on ad-hoc processes and fragile tools –
subject to omissions caused by human and network errors, risks to data
integrity, and potential for inaccuracies and fraud, inconsistent treatment of
PII, etc. As FDA started approving at-home test kits and testing moved beyond
the controlled environment of medical labs to workplaces, colleges, and
universities, airports, sports venues, etc., and eventually to at-home testing,
these challenges grow – creating an urgent need to increase the trust in the
completeness, integrity, and accuracy of the reported data, and the pandemic
mitigation efforts that rely on it.
Verifiable Health Credentials
Capturing
testing results and vaccination progress for government pandemic surveillance
is just part of the need. Individuals need to be able to show their own
negative testing results or that they’ve been vaccinated for air travel (at
least internationally), have access to work sites, and potentially other
gatherings (e.g., sports games, concerts, etc.) after lock-downs ease. However,
as with other faked vaccination records seen around the world (e.g., fake
yellow fever travel cards in Zimbabwe), the paper cards being issued today can
be easily forged and even digital records linked to QR codes are not entirely
safe, while so-called digital immunity passports, which are verifiable, can be
controversial.
Have More Questions!!
Email at: - sales@blockchaindevelopments.io
Connect with expert team: - https://bit.ly/2B32Az7
Comments
Post a Comment