South Korea’s Commons Foundation to Launch Blockchain-Based Epidemiological Research Platform

The Commons Foundation, a South Korean non-governmental institution, disclosed its strategy to create a blockchain powered platform that intends to manage health epidemics amidst Covid-19 predicament.

As per Digital Today, the NGO will use public blockchain to develop an epidemiological research platform to match the forthcoming post-Covid-19 period.

The document points to a statement by Choi Yong-gwan, chairman of the Commons Foundation, who voiced worries about the continuing infringement of personal data due to the pandemic crisis.

Such circumstances encouraged the NGO to create a solution. Choi states that the platform will assist in avoiding future pandemic from affecting South Korea in a big manner.

The NGO detailed that a public blockchain, named “MicroBitcoin,” will be utilized by the Common Foundation to build the platform. They have selected it for robustness and safety, citing that the technology has the capability to avoid any kind of compromise.

All personal data will be encrypted by the platform and held on the public blockchain network to “increase reliability and make data forgery impossible.”

The Common Foundation details that the application will provide an individual encryption key via personal validation of the mobile phone and documents the user’s travel in the city on the blockchain.

If person A is identified as a Covid-19 infected person, they can straight away input the encryption key value and offer info that cannot be modified and sent to an epidemiologist. Academics can fix an appointment with person A and a speedy investigation can be carried out.

The Commons Foundation’s chairman stressed the need to end the pandemic while protecting human rights:

“It is important to quickly overcome the pandemic, but it will become more important in the post-corona era to protect the individual’s freedom and human rights while wisely overcoming the pandemic.”

In recent times, Busan, South Korea’s second largest city, rolled out an identification app that utilizes a public blockchain to validate citizen data. On the last week of May, South Korea’s Suseong University inked an agreement with the Korea Artificial Intelligence Association (Koraia) to build a blockchain and AI college in Daegu.