Blockchain Tech Is Aiding The Fight Against COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a prolonged and world wide impact on how health care works on a local and global level, exponentially accelerating the fusing of digital technology with medical care. Blockchain technology is one of the emerging innovations at the forefront of this evolution, due in large part to the technologies immutability, decentralization, and transparency creating limitless applications across multiple domains ranging from electronic management of medical records, management of access rights, and aiding in the ability to provide mobile health.
By Andrew Senior
February 9th, 2022
In relation to COVID-19-related applications, blockchain technology has actively assisted in control and surveillance, immunity/vaccine passport monitoring, and contact tracing for various different organizations. Yet, the full potential of blockchain technology in relation to COVID-19 and non-COVID-19-related applications across the health care gamut remains to be tapped.
Zuellig Pharma, one of the largest healthcare services groups in Asia with the goal of making healthcare more accessible while providing digital and commercial services to support the growing healthcare needs of the region over its almost hundred year history, has launched a blockchain-based system to track the quality of COVID-19 vaccines. Named “eZTracker,” it gives any user the ability to “instantly verify the provenance and authenticity” of vaccines by scanning the QR code on the package. Thus far throughout the pandemic, the utilization of blockchain-based products adopted by big pharma or global healthcare organizations to bolster the anti-COVID effort has been limited.
During April 2021, South Korea introduced the first blockchain-based vaccine passports to combat the COVID-19 crisis. Storing proof of vaccination via a distributed ledger ensured the authenticity of the document making access to locations requiring documentation easier.
Regardless of widespread adoption thus far during the COVID-19 crisis, blockchain technology continues to be an enabling platform for massive change across a broad spectrum of health-care related applications, both during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
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