By harnessing chic technology running along Blockchain, an absolute master-plan has been devised that tends to capture immunity status of the masses, alongside its documentation so as to bring their inability to bring other into the dark and gloomy bubble of infection and this novel tech virtue is called “immunity passports”. The effort and the perceived scheme is likely to be a major draw card in the global efforts of bringing down the spread manifolds and to enable unfolding the normal way of life like before, which appears to be bolted tightly with spanners are rusty and are rendered ineffective.
In other words, as the world community, at length, is groping in dark as to when our burdened lives and compressed living would return to normal and what cost, we need to pay for it, as virus spread appears spiralled out of control and more dreadfully, is found in new variants, in many cities across the world.
Precisely, a digital immunity passport is an e-document highlighting a person’s health details under the purview of Covid-19 and to emphasize that he or she is not a danger to the community for virus transmission. This is exclusively meant for those folks who have defied the entry of virus by testing negative for it and who have received powerful vaccine solution as antidote, ensuring a robust firewall against this virus.
There are various luminaries from multiple specialties who have joined their heads and souls, to present efforts in accomplishing such tedious task and making the dream come alive, i.e. successful development of digital medical passports, and certificates of health about Covid-19.
Moreover, the feat has gained sheen by being featured in IEEE Access.
Dr. Salah Laments, “Covid-19 has had an unprecedented impact on human life across the world. Highly contagious, this disease has affected a significant proportion of the world population with a very large number of infections and deaths. Although, the symptoms, which are similar to those of the influenza virus, vary in severity across people and not all people infected with the disease show symptoms. Some infected people are known as silent carriers or silent spreaders, which makes effective and verifiable testing paramount to a successful response to Covid-19”.
People, especially those who undertake travels frequently, can easily get their Covid-19 test details verified under the robust security cover.
Dr Salah unravels, “The government’s response strategy is evolved and implemented based on data related to infections collected by regional units. Such data relies on clinical diagnosis conducted by hospitals and other specialized facilities, but the presence of multiple intermediaries in this process causes delays in reporting time, which limits hospitals and testing centres from promptly reporting infections. Furthermore, the layered structure in reporting lines can lead to discrepancies, affecting the overall response strategy and its effectiveness in mitigating against the disease”.
To initiate rapid remedial steps against Covid-19 as the symptoms unfold, this is simply commendable that learned minds comprising research team at Khalifa University, have harnessed amorphous Blokchain technology, which is entire fool-proof, reliable indomitable, unstoppable and so forth. Precisely, while going for creating a digital medical passport, the framework contains smart contracts, designed and powered by Ethereum.
Therefore, the Blockchain technology has enabled us to easily establish one’s health condition and how immune he is to Covid-19, in such a decentralized set-up, where logs, entries, records and transactions remain always safe and beyond unwarranted reach.
Dr. Salah comes in again, “Digital health passports are a crucial mode of identification which can help mitigate the spread of contagious diseases. The smart contracts securely store the patient’s vaccination and immunization records as well as their medical and travel history, which is authenticated by the Ministry of health of Foreign Affairs for international usage. The patient’s personally identifiable information is completely secure, as disclosure is delegated to their owner of the information, –à the patient”.
For unrolling digital immunity passports globally and for their ultimate success, dearth of scientific knowledge concerning Covid-19 is reckoned as the biggest roadblock within itself. For instance, it is claimed that we are still in dark about the accuracy of antibody tests, when such are likely to be uncovered or should be detected, how much time they spend in a person’s body and so forth. Nevertheless, as medical groups put hard efforts in grasping the structure of immune responses to Covid-19, technocrats are doing their bit and design, code and develop premium basic frameworks on which prized digital immunity passports would be hosted.
Dr. Salah enlightens, “For our purpose, we envisaged an immunity certificate to verify that a person has developed relevant antibodies to mitigate against Covid-19 and is consequently unable to infect other people. Whether this was from vaccination or previous infection is the medical aspect of this challenge and outside our scope. For us, people with these certificates can have them saved to their smart contract by a testing centre or hospital and the time frame of the immunity would also be included”.
The structure, the design and the coding of the platform is of such a class that smart contracts can easily alert patients and medical community on relevant highlights of the disease progression, such as quarantine status applicable on medical tests that they have covered. Likewise, health groups also have crucial role in the success of this solution, as they would update the immutable framework of blockchain with accurate with medical reports and results following testing and its results fetched.
Besides, every patient is allocated a unique Ethereum address on blockchain which also has his or her biometric details and such an aspect helps in ensuring high-decibel privacy. Patients or anyone on their behalf can restrict access to such sensitive details and on other credentials. This is also because of the fact that the blockchain network stands for the virtues of privacy, security and express data-record handling as well as towering authenticity and for such a purpose, it harbours wider trust and preference among millions around the world. For quicker data sharing, users enjoy immense authority and flexibility while tighter security is also ensured along the network simultaneously and transparency is programmed too, for documents use and management anywhere in the world.
Dr. Salah is filled with hope and enthusiasm ”Our solution tackles an important problem where the travel history and medical history of a Covid-19 test taker or patient can be traced and racked easily. Using the immutable logs, a patient can safely engage in social activities and institutions, while community managers verified stakeholders can access immunization records in an efficient and trusted way”.
