While the concept of a zombie apocalypse has been touted in games and TV shows, a real-life pandemic obviously wouldnt be exciting.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website has a dedicatedprevent zombiespage. If the CDC itself can prove that blockchain technology is afeasible solution, is of vital importance to contain the disease—stopping the spread of infectious diseases and effectively preventing a full-scale outbreak of the epidemic, which undoubtedly deserves attention.
Jim Nasr, Chief Software Architect for the CDC Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory ServicesMIT Technology ReviewThe article published stated:Public health and blockchain are indeed a natural fit, and transferring data peer-to-peer as quickly as possible in a secure, compliant and transparent manner is a key part of its business model.
Blockchain vs Zombies? Real-time disease monitoring is key
image description
Image source: www.ndemiccreations.com
If youve ever played Ndemic Creationsplague incimage description
obviously,
obviously,In the event of a public health crisis, for the blockchain to function, the network system still needs to remain operational.It might be a whole different challenge if there was a zombie world war, with zombies swarming and moving at breakneck speed.
But if one were to evaluate blockchain technologys role in stopping the spread of an infectious disease, it might be more appropriate to choose infected patients who move around at the normal pace of a sick person.
Hayk Vasilyan, PhD candidate in Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering at the University of Southampton, has a more realistic view of the problem. Vasilyan co-foundedBranchMedThe company, which also serves as CEO, is dedicated to developing blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies specifically for the secure collection and transmission of medical records.
Vasilyan agrees with the CDC thatReal-time access to data is key to tackling and containing disease.
He wrote in an email: The distributed nature of the blockchain allows each institution to have full control of its own computing resources, while collaborating with other institutions for data sharing and analysis. Blockchain will enable superior medical data availability and real-time access to data.Real-time access to data will improve clinical care coordination and improve clinical care delivery in emergency medical situations. Real-time data also allows researchers and public health resources to rapidly detect, isolate and modify environmental conditions that affect public health.
Pass the test? The application of blockchain technology faces many obstacles
However, the application of blockchain technology in the public health industry faces many challenges.
Challenge 1: Competition concerns and distaste for transparency
Building a global infrastructure and deploying a blockchain-based global healthcare coordination system will face technical challenges. Beyond that, Vasilyan points to an insurmountable hurdle: the issue of ownership.
He explained that as technology advances, technical challenges such as processing speed and copying data in large batches will be resolved.The main hurdle for blockchain adoption in healthcare will be the issue of ownership- public or private. Some participants were reluctant to share. A prime example is the efforts of insurance payers and hospitals to refuse to share data.
For hospitals, retaining cost data is a competitive advantage. If forced to share it with insurance companies, they may charge different rates for different patients. Sharing data is difficult in an environment where these entities seek to make a profit. If the existingHIPAAHowever,
However,A public chain does not mean opening information to everyone, and the new generation of blockchain technology is also permission-based, which will solve all these problems.
Challenge 2: Healthcare data is big enough to land on the moon
Vasilyan pointed out,Another major issue is storing BIG medical data to the blockchain network,Because earlier versions of the blockchain (Bitcoin) assumed that everyone had a copy of the ledger, it is impossible for medical data to distribute the data among all network participants. But again, with newer versions of blockchain technology, we want to share only on a specified number of nodes. However, this makes the data less secure.
ReportReportIt is estimated that medical data will reach 153 exabytes (164,282,499,072 gigabytes) in 2013 and 2314 exabytes (2,484,638,580,736 gigabytes) in 2020.
As an example, if all healthcare data were stored in the tablets internal memory, thenThe superposition height in 2013 would be nearly 5,500 miles, or 3 percent of the Moons distance. In 2020, that altitude will be more than 82,000 miles, or one-third the distance to the Moon.
here,Vasilyan summarized the main challenges as follows:
Game participants are late adopters of technology;
The transition from paper to digital data is still ongoing;
Ecosystem participants are not always willing to share information;
Medical data (especially images) are too large for current blockchain storage;
Data interoperability is at an early stage across the industry;
The regulatory environment is cautious and progress has been slow.
But Vasilyan thinksAll of these challenges can be solved.He asserted, “I believe these challenges can be overcome and blockchain will be the basis for many innovative medical projects in the future.”
certainly,
certainly,Blockchain technology may have limitations in any application.After all, medical data can only be consistent with the conclusions of the reporter. The accuracy of the data can also suffer if healthcare professionals fail to identify the disease initially.
In response, some startups are developing other medical devices that hope to make diagnosis more accurate and less expensive.Nano VisionThe project plans to deploy nano-sensing chips that are said to enable real-time streaming of molecular data.In any industry, we expect to see the integration of different new technologies, and there will be many significant developments.
Vasilyan pointed out that big data and analytics tools have made great progress in the medical field, and they are a powerful ally of blockchain technology that is shaking up the industry. In fact, BranchMed is merging these technologies.
“Big data and analytics tools have revolutionized every industry and have the potential to revolutionize how epidemics are handled,” he explained, “through data science, epidemics can now be monitored, modeled, and mitigated more effectively. However,There is a lack of structured and disaggregated global healthcare data at this stage.”
Nita Madhav, Senior Director of Data Science at Metabiota, in information week” explains how big data can be used to perform “high-resolution simulations of the spread of global epidemics.”
Madhav writes: Experts have been able to take complex infectious disease datasets and feed them into large computational models of disease spread, generating hundreds of terabytes of data for infectious disease outbreak simulations. These simulations help fill gaps in the use of synthetic outbreak observations and provide new insights into the likely outcomes of an outbreak, including expected number of illnesses, hospitalizations, deaths, employee absenteeism, and economic losses.Ultimately, these insights could help inform the world about the risk of a pandemic and the best ways to mitigate it.
no doubt,
no doubt,Blockchain and big data are a perfect match and will be used to predict the spread of epidemics.BranchMED will develop the best machine learning models running on top of a distributed, transparent and immutable blockchain-generated data layer.
Beyond Medical Data, Blockchain Can Transform Drug Supply Chains
Vasilyan added that in addition to disease surveillance,Blockchain can help changedrug supply chain，And at the moment when a health crisis occurs and real-time response is most critical, it can more accurately and timely distribute and provide urgently needed medicines.
He believes that there is no risk in the use of blockchain technology in the healthcare industry, but there are technical and cultural challenges in the implementation process. we should accept,Sooner or later, blockchain technology will be implemented in almost all industries, it is only a matter of time.
For reprinting/content cooperation/seeking reports, please contact report@odaily.com; reprinting in violation of regulations must be punished by law.
For reprinting/content cooperation/seeking reports, please contact report@odaily.com; reprinting in violation of regulations must be punished by law.
