This is how blockchain can help fight pandemics

Weaknesses in how medical equipment is procured have been exposed and exacerbated by COVID-19. When the pandemic took hold, demand for supplies such as personal protective equipment soared – along with the number of suppliers.

How can buyers of these products know they are sourcing safe and certified equipment from trusted companies? According to OriginTrail – a data sharing platform for global supply chains – blockchain is the answer.

The technology allows information to be recorded in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, cheat or hack – and is increasingly being used to validate the authenticity of data.

Buying with confidence

Working with BSI – the United Kingdom’s standards body – OriginTrail proposes developing a ‘Trusted COVID-19 Essential Supplies Repository.’

“By growing the decentralised Trusted COVID-19 Essential Supplies Repository, we seek to positively impact over 100,000 organisations (governments, hospitals, humanitarian organisations/NGOs) and over 100,000,000 people receiving treatment using reliable equipment,” OriginTrail says on UpLink, the World Economic Forum’s crowdsourcing platform for innovations.

Based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, OriginTrail started out developing traceability tools for the food industry in 2011 and has been using blockchain to ensure data integrity since 2016. BSI uses blockchain to verify the authenticity of claims and certifications and has been working with OriginTrail’s developers since 2019.

External datasets from BSI would be used in the COVID supplies repository to show the types of business standards and certifications that are issued and valid.

“This helps eliminate false claims and misleading medical equipment supplier profiles,” OriginTrail says.

Crowdsourcing to beat COVID

The company’s repository – known as a ‘Trusted Explorer for Medical Device Certificates’ (TEMEC) – is one of more than 100 solutions proposed in response to UpLink’s COVID Challenges 2020 initiative.

This called for “technologies, innovations and solutions that will help us increase our collective readiness to respond to future crises, prevent infection, and allow for early detection of COVID-related infections.”

The COVID Challenges were launched in collaboration with the World Health Organization, Goldman Sachs Foundation, 500 Startups, Top Tier Impact, Impact Africa Network, Village Capital, and the Global Education & Leadership Foundation.

UpLink was launched at Davos 2020 to crowdsource innovations to address the world’s most pressing challenges.

The platform hopes to accelerate the delivery of the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which include achieving good health and wellbeing for all, no poverty and zero hunger by 2030.