COVID-19, commonly referred to as coronavirus disease, has had devastating repercussions across multiple industries worldwide - from healthcare and education, transportation and the economy, all the way down to transport services and economy.
World Health Organization and other health organizations have advised taking preventative steps immediately in order to halt its rapid spread; many government authorities were forced to implement partial or complete lockdown measures due to shortages in supplies or hospital capacity preventing COVID from spreading further; health professionals from government agencies, research institutions and law enforcement must collaborate together in order to combat its harmful pandemic effects effectively.
But much of the crucial data related to COVID-19 are stored on outdated legacy information management systems that do not share it among organizations or provide effective ways of data exchange and sharing, leading to information silos for participating organizations and insufficient means of data sharing, thus diminishing opportunities to work together effectively against COVID-19 pandemic. Utilization of blockchain can assist commercial entities reduce negative consequences caused by COVID-19 pandemic while offering an organized picture of data that facilitate exchange for greater organization coordination and countermeasures against its spread.
Understanding Blockchain
Blockchain is a distributed, decentralized, unalterable ledger of transactions stored across geographically dispersed nodes on an international network of nodes. Since blockchain is decentralized there's no risk of single point of failure attacks giving data and transactions stored there extreme resilience against external attacks; as well as every member of a network being able to see transparent records of transaction on blockchain that build trust in both accuracy and accessibility of this record-keeping technology.
Miner nodes on a blockchain network regularly review new transactions before appending them as blocks to its ledger, with cryptocurrency typically given back as payment for services provided. Miners must utilize computational power and solve cryptographic puzzles through proof-of-work (PoW) consensus protocol in order to mine blocks on blockchain networks, using asymmetric cryptography and hashing algorithms as part of this process.
By employing such mechanisms as this PoW consensus protocol ensures integrity in transactions made across its ecosystem. Blockchain Application uses asymmetric cryptography to verify data's integrity and validity, creating immutability through hashing - a cryptographic algorithm connecting each block with its predecessor - making the data on blockchain platforms immutable and inaccessible to outside manipulation. They come either permissioned or permissionless platforms; public blockchain (also referred to as permissionless blockchain) permits any user to register, transact and engage in mining without restriction or restriction from anyone.
Permissioned blockchain networks, however, are exclusive networks accessible only with permission and usually managed by one organization - their members alone having the authority to transact on said network. Permissioned blockchains such as Hyperledger Fabric and Quorum offer organizations access to a ledger with controlled access rights.
Consortium blockchain platforms enable multiple organizations to collaborate on sharing the data stored therein, unlike private blockchains run solely by one entity. Consortium and private blockchain platforms tend to offer better performance and efficiency compared to public platforms; additionally, consortium and private platforms boast faster transaction execution times compared with public ones.
Comparing consortium and private blockchain platforms to public ones, consortium and private platforms typically provide superior data security and privacy protections, though their transactions tend to be more expensive to execute on permissioned platforms than public platforms.
Blockchain Applications For Fighting Covid-19
Blockchain technology's use as an open and effective healthcare system against COVID-19 pandemic can be made through its trusted ledger technology and networked devices that form its first line of defense. In this section we shall look into its possible applications against it.
Track And Trace Of Personal Protective Equipment
Attributes of COVID-19 can be significantly mitigated through personal protective equipment (PPE). PPE can protect people exposed to COVID-19 from being infected, decreasing frontline healthcare workers' exposure during health emergency outbreaks of this virus. Safety goggles, gloves, shoes, facemasks, helmets and protective clothes are some examples of PPE used for protecting people against coming in contact with infected individuals or surfaces.
Due to an ineffective data tracking system and limited PPE supply and demand figures, during the COVID-19 pandemic there were reports of shortages across several counties due to personal protective equipment (PPE) availability issues and sudden surges in healthcare industry demand for PPEs. Medical staff often had to use tape repair techniques on torn masks in order to keep from coming in contact with COVID-19 due to severe lack of PPE supply as demand rose rapidly for protection against COVID-19 infection.
Poor-quality PPE has been shipped to multiple nations and organizations due to a lack of transparency within logistics supply chain management processes, specifically PPE supply chain systems that do not effectively, reliably or efficiently trace data provenance such as where their source comes from and its certification status. As a result, ascertaining both isotope content as well as source can prove challenging due to this factor.
Drug Discovery And Logistics Monitoring Of Vaccine
Effective immunization against COVID-19 through active vaccine administration is vital to stop its spread, with several laboratories and research institutes conducting clinical trials of various vaccine candidates at the time this paper was written. Authorities, governments, and research institutions remain highly concerned over its efficacy, safety and genuineness; such potential negative reactions on health could compromise it and potentially compromise efforts to fight COVID.
Existing vaccine management systems present significant obstacles related to risks related to distribution and security failures as well as hacking into vaccine logistics supply chains for malicious purposes. False pharmaceutical companies use this technological limitation as an opportunity to produce fake or inferior vaccines that purport to treat COVID-19 patients. Their main raw material source for manufacturing these inferior vaccines is subpar quality material.
Subpar vaccinations may also be produced using substandard manufacturing techniques when developing vaccines, potentially endangering human lives by entering into black markets with fake, counterfeit, or inferior vaccines. Adversaries could successfully fabricate data related to production or expiration dates during manufacturing processes (for manufacturing purposes such as processing), shipment (with regards to transportation services or distribution channels) or consumption due to lack of operational transparency thereby increasing profits further.
Incentive-Based Volunteer Participation In Clinical Trials
Conducting clinical trials to develop the COVID-19 vaccine can be complex, expensive and time consuming. Organizations involved require close coordination among them geographically dispersed sites for successful implementation of trials requiring close cohesion between their efforts to produce this vital medicine. Organizations involved in clinical trials to create and administer the COVID-19 vaccine include researchers, donors, and pharmaceutical companies. Traditional, centralized-based clinical trial data management systems face numerous difficulties that impede data integrity, performance and compliance requirements, such as privacy assurance measures for participant health and safety regulations as well as subject enrollment.
Decentralized clinical trial management systems may present multiple versions of trial data, potentially creating information silos within enterprises. Therefore, such an approach could result in redundant clinical trial data being handled and maintained by multiple organizations - which further complicates retrieval, processing, and interpretation of results of trials. Centralizing clinical trial data opens it up for manipulation by external hackers or trial participants, creating the potential risk of manipulation from both.
Centralized incentive-based clinical trial management systems often experience difficulties managing incentives fairly and transparently while managing data concerns effectively. Centralized incentive-based clinical trial management systems rely on intermediary services for providing incentives to participants. Unfortunately, such intermediary services can be both time and cost prohibitive, not being capable of effectively handling micropayments efficiently or affordably.
Pharmaceutical firms and academic institutions could leverage blockchain technology to ensure clinical trial data integrity when creating vaccines. Blockchain provides all approved organizations access to one, synchronized view of clinical trial information - this helps eliminate issues like inconsistent or redundant trial information due to decomposition of current centralized trial management systems.
Read More: Revolutionizing Data Sharing: How Blockchain Technology is Transforming Company Communication
Delivery Of Remote Healthcare And Medical Supplies
Advanced remote health techniques, like telehealth and telemedicine services, can reduce the spread of infectious viruses by connecting patients remotely with medical professionals through IT infrastructure. By eliminating patient access restrictions and workforce shortage issues, remote diagnosis and treatment services have proven very successful at controlling COVID-19 cases worldwide - thus rendering these employable remote healthcare services. Unfortunately, remote healthcare systems may suffer from single point failure issues because they are overseen and controlled centrally; this may compromise accuracy and reliability of electronic health records stored therein.
Innovative blockchain technology boasts many unique characteristics that could transform remote healthcare. Blockchain can establish provenance of electronic health records, validate identity of those seeking patient data requests, protect anonymity of patients requesting data access, automate micropayments for remote healthcare services and automate them - these benefits alone make blockchain worthy of serious consideration for remote health solutions.
Traceability plays an invaluable role when it comes to COVID-19 testing; its traceability feature helps establish the origins of self-testing medical kits used. To limit virus spread in society, those whose test results come back negative are required to adhere to self-quarantine regulations; with blockchain technology offering opportunities for secure monitoring and tracking of medical supplies for individuals under self-quarantine; private or consortium platforms are ideal platforms to implement remote healthcare services in order to address patients' primary security and privacy concerns about health information storage on ledger.
Digital Contact Tracing
Compliance with government social distancing orders can significantly diminish people's social interactions and help stop COVID-19 from spreading further. "Digital contract tracing" is another public health measure which can break through person-to-person transmission of COVID-19 to enforce social distancing orders more effectively. Digital contact tracing provides a rapid and accurate method to assess every social contact that took place between COVID-19-infected patients and people they interacted with during the infectious incubation period, and digital monitoring identifies every possible contact point between infected people.
GPS or Bluetooth data is utilized to detect social interactions with an infected individual using proximity data, using GPS/BLE or both as identification. Once identified as being associated with COVID-19 cases, individuals who come in close contact must undergo testing, close observation and quarantine measures; transparency and immutability measures prevent adversaries or healthcare partners from altering or erasing user health records, such as COVID-19 test results.
On the other hand, lightweight application designs help users focus on features they require while attenuating system resources. Users of digital contact tracing have high standards when it comes to privacy, security and transparency for COVID-19 data as well as battery lifespan; an ideal digital contact tracing solution should feature high data protection levels with large coverage areas, battery friendly operations that don't drain their batteries quickly, lightweight application designs optimized for resource optimization as well as providing maximum data privacy protection.
Rapid Response Registry For Medical Professionals
At present, equitable distribution and protection of limited medical resources present significant challenges within contemporary public healthcare systems. Numerous investigations have confirmed that COVID-19 pandemic has outshone global healthcare infrastructure; to protect employee health and safety in such an event, authorities or governments need to act swiftly according to established policies, such as swift policy formation for:
- Permitting a caregiver to see patients under quarantine virtually
- Expanding hospital personnel and equipment
- Using AI-powered robots to help medical personnel administer COVID-19 testing
- Using drones to deliver medical supplies
- Educating the public to prevent the dissemination of misleading information regarding COVID-19 can help contain the pandemic.
Within hospitals or organizations, information regarding medical professionals--such as physicians and nurses--and resources is typically housed within traditional healthcare systems. As part of their efforts to combat COVID-19 pandemic, medical professionals from different hospitals enrolled in often geographically dispersed locations create limited avenues for collaboration among themselves. Rapid response registries aim to improve coordination among hospitals or agencies and address shortages of medical professionals by creating and maintaining a list of healthcare practitioners worldwide along with their roles and expertise. It should also consider smart contracts for document sharing, payment settlement, physician skill verification, data sharing via public blockchain platforms or proxy re-encryption servers as possible strategies.
Smart contracts deployed on blockchain technology can assist healthcare organizations to quickly and securely identify qualified medical professionals. Authorities are then able to easily ascertain resource capacity, allocation and demand at hospitals through one unified view of healthcare data; medical students as well as employed healthcare providers (both employed and unemployed) could register through rapid response registry systems built using this technology on this blockchain platform; furthermore any fraudulent data would render any prediction models or estimates regarding COVID-19's future growth meaningless.
Tracking Of Covid-19 Data
Social media platforms have proven invaluable during the COVID-19 pandemic, serving as the most trusted way to share information. Unfortunately, however, their public nature makes misinformation, sensationalism, and rumors likely. Unfortunately, since information sources cannot always be thoroughly evaluated on websites and social media platforms that currently exist today; any false or misleading reports concerning healthcare, medical devices, COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, or social distancing or movement restrictions might result in false alarm. As a result, false or misleading reports concerning healthcare can cause anxiety; further leading to harmful self-medication or open defiance against laws regarding social distancing or movement restrictions laws.
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Conclusion
As part of their analysis, several aspects of blockchain technology's potential applications for managing COVID-19 pandemic have been thoroughly considered to help government agencies, medical professionals and law enforcement agencies more efficiently deal with its health crisis caused by this outbreak. Discussion of current blockchain-based systems' roles, participants and system components for various use cases helps combating it - three model blockchain-based systems were provided as basis and guidelines to researchers proposing new systems addressing other seven use cases that need implementation by this pandemic.
