Preventing Future Pandemics with Blockchain & ML
By: Andrew Ryan Brick
Tags: Coronavirus, Covid 19, Blockchain, Distributed Ledgers, Machine Learning

Disclaimer: This is my personal Medium profile and the opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer, Object Computing Inc. To learn more about our work, visit objectcomputing.com/

The COVID-19 Pandemic demands a revaluation of our practices as healthcare and businesses struggle to keep up with a very real threat. Business leaders, engineers, and helpers around the world are sparking new solutions to support medical staff, help resolve the crisis, and adapt to changing economic times, from the safety of their homes.

As one of these engineers stuck at home I’d like to discuss some accessible technologies available to help save lives and promote economic resilience during any crisis, present or future. Google Cofounder Eric Schmidt, alongside writers at The Week, The Verge, Forbes, Vox, and Harvard Business School, asked society to use this time for reevaluating our technological infrastructure. Unfortunately, global efforts remain scattered and disorganized, as technologists must scrape their insights from a cosmos of disconnected apps and disparate databases.

We will explore the benefits of hosting medical records on a shared, distributed web service. This web service would be the gateway through which users interact with a distributed ledger database. This database would enable users of all types to retain security, privacy, and trust, while simultaneously enabling researchers to mine the data for insights using cryptography, limited-result queries, and zero-knowledge proofs. Here we will lay out a technological roadmap for worldwide collaboration.

Coronavirus is a mortal threat that ripples disaster in other aspects of our lives like disrupting global supply chains and weakening, or closing, the vast majority of small businesses. Blockchain technology has always been about how the combination of seemingly mundane components, like access control, networking, recordkeeping, and distributed computing, come together to form a vast engine for sociological and operational change; precisely the weapon needed in a battle against a pandemic.

In the near term, resolving the crisis comes down to prevention, treatment, and mitigation. Here, we will discuss how technologies like blockchain and machine learning can pursue all three methods for the wellbeing of both public health and the economy.

Prevention

Fighting Misinformation

Before global collaborative efforts for prevention can be effective, common truth must be established. Misinformation, unfortunately, remains a pervasive issue in healthcare. That problem is amplified in a pandemic, in part, due to the need to collect our information from a wide variety of disconnected sources, with no definitive database to rule them all. Insufficient standardization of data entry methods complicate things further. Scientists are unwittingly normalizing data which has already been adjusted by statisticians can cause major inaccuracies. “Why is it still so hard to get good, clean, accessible information on something the whole world is researching?” Here’s what CTO of IBM Blockchain, Gari Singh, had to say when discussing their efforts to fight Covid-19:

“It’s not that we were trying to force blockchain into this solution, but we thought we need to replicate data, we need to have trusted sources, we need to make sure it can’t be tampered with.”

Distributed ledger technologies, like blockchains, are a natural fit for creating a common source of truth when competing parties, like nations with conflicting interests, share a goal. A blockchain is a record book, also referred to as a ledger, or database, maintained by computers behaving as a collective. Control over this ledger requires controlling the collective, a round-robin of computers monitoring each other. The checks and balances of these so-called consensus algorithms are designed to undermine any incentive a malicious actor might have for putting false information in the shared ledger. The incentives, and enforcement of this process depends on the application, but in the case of solving a pandemic, accurate data could save lives in countries all around the world so the common geopolitical motivation is clear.

“The misinformation and conspiracies we see out there can be worrisome, but I would worry more about the counterproductive effects of putting too much focus on trying to debunk them, rather than emphasizing behavioral steps that need to be taken to protect yourself or reinforcing the accurate information we have about the disease,”

-Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, who recent published “The effects of corrective information about disease epidemics and outbreaks”

If the first cases of a viral outbreak were reported to a global database of infectious diseases, the data would be trustworthy as it’s users would have to go on the record, in a publicly searchable database (at least pseudonymously).

The impact of uploading this trusted data is multiplied because the whole database is replicated locally for all of the computers (nodes) comprising the blockchain network. So once any hospital on the network knows about the virus, they will all be notified. This represents a gigantic leap forward as doctors around the world no longer have to waste hours sharing, comparing, and reconciling all of the information they get. Consistency across the distributed database and certainty of the origins of the data will unleash a revolution of clarity in medicine unlike any before. Additionally, moving automatically-verified data also improves the speed of insurance claims and approval, which itself save lives.

Understanding Transmission

Medical science’s ability to track the spread of the virus fuels its understanding of transmission, just as understanding the nature of viral transmission helps track it’s spread. Having data entry be mandated to conform to certain standards, limits the impact of human error, and make it easier for data analysts to gather insights about the virus itself, potentially avoiding future disasters entirely with quick response and collaboration. Having that ledger be hosted in many nodes across the world would ensure quick access and encourage innovation from the global community. Collaborative development and data mining could even be incentivized through digital assets

As the first reported cases of a virus are posted to an online shared ledger, machine learning could immediately begin characterizing the geography, conditions, and demographics most likely to get infected. Developers could create models drawing from the same data, easily being compared for accuracy, thus contributing to a virtuous cycle of updating expectations based on results, and adjusting our understanding to be more precise.

Giving the Public the Essential Information

In order to prevent the spread of any highly contagious disease, the public needs to be informed quickly. Our hypothetical medical blockchain is a good candidate, with the right cryptographic layer personal information would only be exposed to the people it concerns. At the same time, relevant data for the collective can be exposed giving everyone the benefits of lowering the transmission rate. Here, information set aside for the public would clearly explain the absolute latest recommendations and insights to the best of our collective understanding: a combined effort of computers and doctors, held liable for their recommendations.

Although seemingly unnecessary at first, if presented through a relatively intuitive interface, the general public could be of tremendous use in reporting symptoms early, informing the analytics, and noticing outbreaks and mutations in virus behavior sooner. Decentralized architecture encourages, not just administrators and experts, but all stakeholders to take responsibility for uploading new data.

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and limited-result queries alongside blockchain and machine learning could help the public know sooner if they might have come in contact with a contagious person, without violating privacy. This same technique could be used in reverse to track the movement of the viral spread without compromising the identities of the tracked users.

Even blockchain’s original function: money transfer, is an excellent solution for reducing viral infection through cash, one of the most widely circulated potential surfaces for viruses to live.

Treatment

Data Mining for New Treatments

Not all infections are preventable, and while, supercomputers are being employed alongside machine learning to find possible treatments, a shared medical blockchain could provide a digital library of information from which both human and machine experts can not only learn about the spread of an infectious disease, with sufficient data, software could discover treatments automatically before a virus is widespread.

Blockchain networks are extremely resilient once replicated enough times, over a large enough geographic area. This means the data on most blockchains will remain safe for a very long time despite any international turmoil, natural disasters, or a minority of nodes getting hacked. These peer-discover networks self-heal if damaged. In any event, at least some nodes running the network will remain online, and even be up to date.

As the collaborative medical blockchain appreciates, machine learning would mine insights from past infections to characterize a novel virus by its similarity to others. Machine learning already enabled better access to covid-19 testing by using widely available x-rays

Crowdsourcing Equipment

3D-printing has proven a useful technique in supplying supplemental health care equipment during this crisis. A medical blockchain could contain exact design details for equipment, either by enterprise or the public, in order to facilitate fast, distributed manufacturing. This could also drastically reduce obstacles to verifying third-party equipment is safe for use.

Smarter, Faster, Cleaner Supply Chains

Crowdfunding and crypto bounties for solutions of all types would be easy on top of a decentralized ledger. Still, grassroots efforts alone cannot adequately respond to a global crisis until enterprise supply chains are given the advantages of decentralized systems.

Getting treatment in the hands of people who need it rapidly, the medical supply chain needs more automation. Fewer physical interactions between humans or with products would reduce the odds of transmission by delivered goods, which is essential when it comes to protecting the wellbeing of the workers and customers in the supply chain. 3D-printing has proven a useful technique in supplying supplemental health care equipment during this crisis. A medical blockchain could contain exact design details for equipment, either by enterprise or the public, in order to facilitate fast, distributed manufacturing. This could also drastically reduce obstacles to verifying third-party equipment is safe for use.food supply. Blockchain enables auditable package tracking and verification for products, dramatically reducing the workload for human inspectors, bookkeepers, and warehouse managers.

In the unlikely event a processing facility or shipping service ends up being contaminated, an administrator for the distribution of materials would be able to replace them with some other service, or facility, preapproved to fill that role. This same idea could be drilled all the way down to individual pieces of equipment that could be identified as contaminated. This is drastically faster, simpler, and cheaper when compared to the logistics of switching carriers in traditional systems. Sufficiently advanced blockchain technology will allow supply chains to reroute packages in real time.

As inventory tracking technology gets more sophisticated and detailed, hospitals will be able to disseminate medical equipment rapidly based on patient needs, synchronized to a decentralized medical blockchain.

This type of transparency would also be highly useful to the customers who will be able to see the source of their medicine, the data rationale for its effectiveness, and the doctors who recommend it. They will also be able to certify their treatment is not counterfeit.

Mitigation

More On Supply Chains

Blockchains create a common ground, resulting in a level playing field for economic rivals to pool their resources without compromising their competitive edge.

All of the prior points on blockchain-powered supply chain extend to everyday businesses looking to become more adaptive, efficient, and transparent with their customers. These cost-cutting measures multiply as different blockchains are made interoperable, and help create mutually supportive financial networks, expediting economic recovery, first locally, then globally. If the organizations become highly symbiotic, they might want to consider adapting a meta-cooperative model through blockchain. They could even provide mutual financial assistance, like a credit union.

Distributed ledgers make businesses adaptable by ensuring access to their entire system of records, no matter the crisis. Team members can sooner engage in remote work without having to constantly overwhelm the company’s centralized server by having to re-download their entire work computer’s hard drive. These same features have shined a light on distributed ledgers during a crisis where remote notary and settlement services are in high demand.

Economic Fallout

Decentralized governance systems facilitate alternate authorization-workflows for relieving congestion inside a company. Giving a group of managers the ability to approve what would otherwise take a vice president, relieves office traffic & fortifies the company against losing staff or if someone is absent.

To many, the premise of Bitcoin was to combat the impacts of inflation that result from quantitative easing. Ironically, cryptocurrency has become one of the prime vehicles under consideration to deliver national stimulus and perhaps even mint the first official US digital dollar

Conclusion

These disruptive times call for disruptive measures. Blockchain, machine learning, and distributed manufacturing are all part of this new paradigm. The bottleneck of our healthcare system should never be the supply chain or inaccessible data. The controls of our economy should never be limited to that which has been thought of before.

To prevent the spread of a virus, treat it as quickly as possible, and mitigate its impacts on our economy, we must build a scientific healthcare system that is collaborative with other nations, with doctors, and patients.

In essence, blockchain is exactly the type of solution the world should be using to find solutions together. How can we make this a reality, by working together?

If you enjoyed this article you may be interested to read technical insights from my colleagues:

https://objectcomputing.com/resources/publications/sett