ICONLOOP's role in healthcare
Welcome to this week’s edition of RHIZOME Wire!
ICONLOOP to lead healthcare consortium in South Korea
This week brought some exciting news for ICONLOOP specifically and the ICON project generally.
First, on May 11th, there was an announcement that ICONLOOP was included among a list of publicly led and privately led blockchain trial projects for 2020. According to The Iconist, ICONLOOP’s role would be to help build “an integrated chronic disease management platform for Gangwon Province.”
Later in the week, more information came out about ICONLOOP’s role in this effort and just what this would be trying to accomplish:
ICONLOOP announced Thursday that it had been selected as the supervising operator of Gangwon Province’s blockchain-powered integrated management platform for chronic diseases.
The project is one of 10 publically led blockchain projects for 2020 recently announced by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Internet Security Agency (KISA). ICONLOOP will join with UbiPlus and EIDWare to form a consortium that will jointly begin work on the project by the end of the year.
(UbiPlus is a company specializing in customer-management solutions, while EIDWare produces voice-recognition technology aimed at seniors, including a voice recognition engine so people without internet connection can still use voice interface.)
And why Gangwon Province? A couple of years ago, when the Korean government announced their blockchain ambitions, they selected multiple zones to specialize in various blockchain activities:
Digital health care will be fostered in Gangwon Province, smart wellness in Daegu, autonomous driving in Sejong City, e-mobility in South Jeolla Province, smart safety control in North Chungcheong Province and next-generation battery recycling in North Gyeongsang Province.
According, to The Iconist, “Gangwon Province is regarded as an optimal place for development of the healthcare industry with its aging population, a medical system plagued by poor accessibility, and its recent designation as a regulation-free zone for digital healthcare.”
The article goes on to describe the core goal of the project:
This project — to be conducted with public health clinics in the province and a provincial center for remote medicine — will focus on building a blockchain-based health management system for chronic cardio-cerebrovascular disease patients who cannot visit the hospital or find themselves in management blindspots.
With a focus on only one type of health condition, this project is obviously narrow in scope; however, it’s likely that — if successful — the project can scale to serve a much larger swath of the health care industry in not only Gangwon Province, but possibly Korea as well (although such scale is likely years away).
The article continues:
Through the blockchain-based platform, the system can make use of DID and transparently and securely manage health information. Based on this, the platform will be able to offer mobile services such as measured health data through AI-powered predictive analysis and IoMT (IoT for medicine).
The use of an ICON-led DID system in healthcare is far from a new idea. In the original ICON Whitepaper, healthcare was listed as one of the original consortiums ICONLOOP (theloop at the time) was working with. Here is how the white paper describes the vision for blockchain in health care:
Blockchain ensures the interoperability between different hospital systems and can manage the access rights to data and records reliably. We believe a secure distribution of medical information through blockchain and a fair reward system for those who share their data through the network will invigorate the medical ecosystem.
From a more practical standpoint, here is a scenario Markus Jun (now serving as the Hyperconnect P-Rep) laid out way back in May 2018 (Chain ID, as referenced below, is essentially the namesake for earlier versions of ICONLOOP’s DID technology):
Here’s how this plays out in real life. Imagine that a student requires surgery. She may check into a hospital, verify her identity on Chain ID and give permission so that the hospital can share her medical records directly with her insurance company. This will trigger a smart contract that will immediately transfer her health records and her surgeon’s medical certificate (signed digitally on ICON’s Chain Sign) to the insurance company. The insurance company can then immediately process the insurance claim as both the health records and the medical certificate are tamper-proof on the blockchain and do not require additional verification or the sending of official paper documents, steps which typically slow down the process of traditional insurance claims and make them more costly.
With the backing of the government, strong partners, and an environment amenable to disruption, the project with Gangwon Province may be the first major opportunity to see the implementation of this vision. While it will take time to play out, this is certainly a development worth watching.
News from ICON World
Blockchain Company joins the MyID Alliance
Blockchain Company has joined the MyID Alliance and ICONDAO provided an English translation of the news.
Somesing announces a cooperation with “TJ YouTube Karaoke” YouTube Channel
TJ Media is Korea’s number one offline Karaoke device manufacturing and online music content production and distribution with 830,000 YouTube subscribers.
Korea’s Ministry of Science and Technology is aiming to inject $400M into blockchain R&D over the next 5 years
As a little bit of background to the news, ICONLOOP received the Minister of Science and ICT award for its development and popularization of the blockchain industry in Korea.
Liechtenstein Blockchain Innovator (LCX) announces a partnership with ICON Foundation
Corey Costa releases another podcast with Geo Dude of ICONbet
Topics such as DAOlottery, promos, what's coming up for ICONbet, DAOcheckers and other new casual games to be created were discussed.
Worth a watch/listen!
ICON weekly update #1
Brian Li of RHIZOME has started a new weekly update series on his site surrounding all the latest news/developments within the ICON ecosystem in a short and easily digestible format.
Be sure to check it out!
Reliant Node provides a sneak peek of their upcoming MyICONWallet release
Equally of interest, RHIZOME did a live giveaway for their video review of the MyICONWallet beta.
Be sure to check out the latest episode of the RHIZOME Report as soon as it’s released!
UBIK Capital releases a comprehensive report on their drone project
ICON P-Rep Delegation Pilot Program has begun!
Blockchain Industry News
CryptoKitties go live on Winklevoss-backed marketplace - Decrypt
Nifty Gateway is one such marketplace for crypto collectibles. The platform has been around since 2018, but the team relaunched the platform in March after receiving backing from the Winklevoss twins, the billionaire brothers behind Gemini.
JPMorgan now serves crypto exchanges, Coinbase and Gemini first clients - report - The Block
JPMorgan is reportedly providing cash-management services to the crypto exchanges and handling dollar-based transactions for their U.S.-based customers. It will process wire transfers, and deposits and withdrawals through the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network.
Verifiable Randomness for Blockchain Smart Contracts - Chainlink
Chainlink VRF helps enable and accelerate the development of smart contracts focused on blockchain gaming, security, layer-two protocols and various other use cases. Developers can easily integrate Chainlink VRF to utilize verifiable randomness in their smart contracts through our recently released developer documentation.
Crypto bank SEBA teams up with Tokensoft to offer asset tokenization solutions - The Block
SEBA plans to help its clients tokenize fiat, precious metals and alternative assets such as real estate and art, as well as help conduct security token offerings (debt or equity), per the website.