As Taiwan’s fight against Covid-19 continues, with some experts predicting that the vaccination could become a yearly jab like a flu shot, a team of doctors and engineers is developing a blockchain-based platform that could keep track of residents’ vaccination histories and health conditions.
Fast facts:
- Albert C. Yang, director of the digital medicine center at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, told Forkast.News that his team had been building a blockchain-based platform designed to record information including personal histories of vaccinations, side effects and health conditions.
- Yang said that his team would be talking to hospitals associated with the medical school at the university and to corresponding local governments in a bid to roll out the system.
- A major challenge for the platform, Yang said, was to obtain data in a unified format from hospitals and local governments.
- Yang’s team has previously rolled out a cloud platform for monitoring silent hypoxia, a condition from many Covid-19 patients have suffered. That platform has been put to use in several hospitals to track patients’ conditions and avoid frequent direct contact between patients and medical staff.
- Hong Kong has launched something similar to what Yang’s team is proposing. The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Ethereum software company ConsenSys last week announced the launch of a Covid-19 digital health passport to record Covid test results, temperature checks and vaccinations.
- Malaysia’s technology authority also said in March that it had begun a vaccine tracing project powered by blockchain technology, the Malay Mail reported.