The idea is to check the information related to the pandemic, detect cases, and help control the disease. This tool can bring technologists, data scientists, and public health officials the data they need to work.
The World Health Organization (WHO) will use blockchain technology together with IBM and Oracle to create a data center and check the information related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus has caused the death of 88,301 people worldwide. According to Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, EE. UU.), there were 1,483,323 people infected with the virus until the night of this April 9th.
For this reason, and considering that the virus has spread rapidly around the world (in just four months), these entities need secure tools to store and share the official information. This is how blockchain emerges as an alternative.
The name of this platform will be MiPasa. This site will be like COVID-19 research and data collection center to assist in pandemic control and eradication. The developers of the project hope that the platform will be very useful whilst they create more tools for data analysis and to detect new coronavirus cases.
About the Project
Hacera is the Company that designed MiPasa, which is a platform built on Hyperledger Fabric. IBM and Oracle are other important actors that participate in the project. However, the China Health Commission, Microsoft, and Johns Hopkins University are some of the other actors involved in the plan.
“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”, a press release explained.
The official information also added: “We hope 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”.
In this way, the platform will be an open data center that will use blockchain technology to verify the veracity of the data that the platform will store regarding the new coronavirus pandemic. This is according to Jonathan Levi, CEO of Hacera.
Besides, Levi explained why they decided to create the project: “We feel that there is not enough information to make decisions based on the information. How can we help all people who would like to have access to the data, analyze it, and provide more knowledge?”, he commented.
IBM Blockchain CTO, Gari Singh, said they agreed with everyone that it was important to “start a consortium” as soon as possible. “We started off brainstorming ideas on how to collect, provide, and use verified information about the virus. It’s not that we were trying to force blockchain into this solution, but we thought we need to replicate data, we need to have trusted sources, we need to make sure it can’t be tampered with”.
More Project to Face the Disease
IBM is also working on the “Call for Code” initiative. The goal is to quickly create tools that can help curb the crisis. Singh added that, in the coming days or weeks, the platform could also include information related to coronavirus test data.
“You could think of a simple set of applications for drive-through testing. Using an iPad, you could enter some information without having to know who the person was. We can start to collect that and build new applications of that”, Singh said.
To conclude, Jonathan Levi said that a large number of companies are offering their data to help curb the virus. “Lots of data tool providers are getting involved. Everybody is rushing to help and nobody is charging a cent”, he said.
By María Rodríguez
