UK Hospitals Explore Blockchain Tech Remedies
With tech putting its best foot forward when it comes to battling the pandemic, the fight for widespread vaccination is another battlefront that has also commenced and is in it’s prime right now.
For the battle of widespread immunizations, U.K. National Health Services (NHS) have taped blockchain tech as part of their arsenal against COVID-19. The NHS will be using the same underlying system for cryptocurrencies like the infamous Bitcoin and popular Ether in monitoring supply and cold storage of two hospitals in the UK.
Out of the three vaccines in circulation right now, the one that is codeveloped by U.S pharma-mammoth Pfizer and its German partner BioNtech has some serious storage issues.
It must be stored at temperatures of -70 degrees Celsius (-94 degrees Fahrenheit) – certainly not your typical winter temperature, these temperatures are below freezing.
Once the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is out of its storage unit and begins to thaw, it is only effective for another five days at 2-8 degrees Celsius.
All these factors render as major issues that blockchain tech manages to successfully address. And it is no surprise to see another use of blockchain in the health tech segment.
The two hospitals, in Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick in central England have teamed up with Hedera Hashgraph which bring their blockchain networks to the table. Noteworthy to mention is the powerful companies that back Hedera, amongst which are: Boeing, IBM, LG, and Google.
The other partner is asset-monitoring company Everyware that will provide the software needed to constantly track the vaccine’s temperature around the clock.
The solution is powered by Hedera’s blockchain system and Everyware’s sensors while the NHS deploys a distributed ledger to better accurately track the cold-storage equipment that holds the vaccines.
Distributed ledgers act as decentralized and synchronized digital systems for sharing data, and are popular for their large immunity to problems that may be introduced by human error.
This tech jargon further illustrates how the intricacies of blockchain technology can be hard to grasp even for tech enthusiasts, but the growing practicality and prevalence of this technology is plain to see.
With sources indicating that worldwide spending on blockchain solutions projected to grow to an estimated $15.9 billion by 2023 we are bound to see a plethora of new technologies and developments that will certainly allow for a more connected and smarter tomorrow.