UAE based Accubits Technologies has launched a pandemic management system with a mission to curb the spread of COVID-19 and to revive the struggling economy. The platform named RebuildTheChain enables governments to enforce partial economic lockdown via health-card based access system and also enables the health departments to efficiently control the spread of the pandemic.
The pandemic has put the world in an economic recession and the only way to combat this slump in the economy is to impose partial lockdowns and isolations instead of a complete one. Using RebuildTheChain (RTC ), governments can issue digital health cards to citizens to represent their current health status. The system will assign health cards to a user based on their recent activities, such as the places they have visited and the people they have interacted with. A person is more likely to get affected by COVID19 if they visit a hot zone – which is a place where many COVID cases are reported or if they’ve come in close contact with a patient. Public places like banks, shopping malls, workplaces, etc. will only allow entry to people with ‘no risk’ health cards.
The platform mainly consists of two components- a mobile application for citizens and a portal for healthcare departments or government agencies. RTC provides useful intel to the health authorities regarding potential new cases, the direction of the pandemic spread and the status of people under isolation, etc. RTC tracks every citizens’ geolocation (using GPS location data, Bluetooth proximity data, cellular triangulation data) without compromising the data privacy to analyze their exposure to the pandemic hot zones, close contact with affected people, etc. The mobile app delivers alerts to the users when they are in high-risk locations or if they are near a COVID-19 patient. A virtual 50-meter geofence based on proximity hazards is set up to warn people of the hot zones. As soon as a user is located near this area, a notification from the app will pop up as a warning.
The platform automates the manual process of contact tracing, route map creation, etc, so that these processes can be executed in a matter of minutes and authorities can make quick and informed decisions to effectively contain the pandemic. Based on the data generated from the exposure analysis and contact analysis, RTC enables authorities to issue secure e-health cards to citizens to represent their risk level. The people with ‘no-risk’ cards will not have to be socially isolated while those with ‘risk’ cards must be quarantined.
“It is really important to act quickly during a pandemic. Right now, it takes days to identify the places visited by patients who have tested positive for the virus. It takes even longer to find out who has come in contact with them and may still not have accurate data. We wanted to build a platform that would allow governments and healthcare officials to carry out the same process efficiently, automated and in a matter of minutes.” says Jithin V.G, the CEO of Accubits Technologies.
Blockchain for ensuring Data Privacy
Rebuild The Chain is built with data privacy and security as the highest priority. The RTC Platform abides by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws which ensure that each individual has full control over their own personal data. The platform is implemented such that all data are securely stored and abides by the data and privacy laws of the region. All data pertaining to location, and routing are stored on secure and encrypted servers in each country, complying with the official data protection laws.
In the platform, the actual data including the PII – Personally Identifiable Information remains with the user while only a hashed form of it is stored on a blockchain network. The health authorities can access the pseudonymized information from the Blockchain network for the analytics and projections related to the pandemic.
By enabling governments to enforce partial lockdown, strategically deploying social distancing and health-card based access systems, RebuildTheChain aims to bring the economy up and running during this pandemic.
