Data Integrity Verification
When working with vast numbers of the data from countless labs across the globe, it can be difficult to track and manage data as well as determine the authenticity of the information, especially when researchers are moving as fast as they can do to find the solutions.
Enterprises like IBM, Oracle, and the World Health Organization (WHO) have banded together to form a blockchain consortium that will utilize MiPasa, a hyperledger-based platform that will enable data tracking and analysis. According to IBM, MiPasa is designed to make it possible to synthesize data sources, address their inconsistencies, help identify errors or misreporting and seamlessly integrate credible new feeds. Also, IBM hopes that this tool can help technologists, data scientists and public health officials by giving them the data they need at scale to respond and devise solutions that can help subdue the outbreak or support recovery.
Processing Insurance Claims
An online mutual-aid platform called Xiang Hu Bao, a platform with over 100 million users which is popular among China’s rural population, is using blockchain technology to manage coronavirus-related financial and insurance claims. The platform is not an insurance product but a collective claim sharing mechanism built on blockchain technology that offers basic health plans to protect participants against different types of critical illnesses. The technology helps the processing of claims at a speedy rate while still maintaining a comprehensive, auditable record of each claim.
Medical Supply Chain
The pandemic has greatly affected everyone, especially people from the medical field. As medical organizations all over the world face a dangerous shortage of significant supplies, including personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators, blockchain technology can also be used in the supply chain of the medical industry in order to ensure the quality of deliverables and trust in various suppliers. And according to Forbes, blockchain is helping and assisting the medical supply chain in number of ways, including:
- Verification of product requirements that vary from country to country
- Verifying supplier sources
- Tracking payments
- Tracking transportation of supplies
- Customs certification
Donation Tracking
As the global economy drastically changed since the pandemic happened, concerned citizens around the world pour donations to help fight the disease. Blockchain offers a secure way to log those transactions, creating transparency and trust that payments will be directly go to the intended recipients.
Cross-Border Payments
It was once a slow and costly process when making payments across national borders. And in the midst of a global pandemic, it is very critical and important to be able to quickly transfer money between countries. With the help of blockchain, people are able to make near-instant cross-border payments. In addition, it has fee structures that are lower than traditional wire transfers. This kind of setup helps people to have a quick transaction, especially in this trying times.
Medical Research
Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies that require mining have attracted businesses that have built their wealth on utilizing massive computing power to solve complex mathematical computations. Now, some of these businesses, such as BitcoinBros, are redirecting their computing power to assist with coronavirus research. And according to biomedcentral.com, blockchain allows for reaching a substantial level of historicity and inviolability of data for the whole document flow in a clinical trial. Hence, it ensures traceability, prevents a posteriori reconstruction and allows for securely automating the clinical trial through what are called Smart Contracts. At the same time, the technology ensures fine-grained control of the data, its security and its shareable parameters, for a single patient or group of patients or clinical trial stakeholders.
Distance Learning
The pandemic did not only greatly affect the economy and medical industry but also the education industry across the globe. With schools and other educational institutions being temporarily shut down, students are being forced to take part in distance learning. Odem, an education and employment marketplace, is offering their blockchain tools for free to institutions during the pandemic. Odem’s credentialing software allows educators to provide students with digital certificates of completion that will integrate with traditional academic tracking after social distancing restrictions are lifted.
