The spread of COVID-19 has grown exponentially in numerous countries over the past few days, accelerating the need for smart solutions to the problems caused by this global pandemic. At Emerge, we are working with our partner Penta Network on multiple fronts to tackle these major challenges.
We’re deploying our supply chain solution, Theseus, to tackle heightened demand for medical supplies and medications.
The wave of COVID-19 cases slamming hospitals has caused shortages in ventilators, as well as face masks, surgical masks, surgical gowns, and surgical gloves. Though scientists haven’t yet discovered any medications or vaccines that are proven safe, effective, and reliable in the fight against COVID-19, we will need robust medical supply chains to rush them all over the world once that day does arrive.
Theseus is built for that task. A logistics system that tracks, traces, and optimizes the global movement of goods, Theseus offers end-to-end traceability via a tracking solution with QR tags, RFID, and smart sensors that enable regulators and supply chain stakeholders to achieve complete and near-real time visibility into their products’ entire journey. Backed by blockchain technology, Theseus improves the speed, reliability, efficiency, transparency, and traceability of entire supply chains, from producers to shippers all the way to end users.
The process starts with generating unique alpha-numeric identification numbers for items tracked. We use QR codes to help data flow through our supply chain tracking system. All data and QR-scanning information is then written to a blockchain, where it’s validated and stored for system administrators. This allows information to be searched and used to generate reports. Workflow processes get tracked and automated.
Digital certificates are issued to certify product origin, ensure quality control, and register exports with proper authorities. Certificates from regulators, backed by blockchain encryption and data security, facilitate regulatory compliance and play a vital role in ensuring pharmaceutical safety.
We are also deploying Theseus to improve food supply chains. Considering the many challenges facing those supply chains during the COVID-19 crisis, those upgrades are sorely needed.
Tighter border controls risk slowing down shipments, enhancing the need for real-time tracking and quality control to guard against spoilage. Frightened shoppers are hoarding items, leading to constrained supply and potential supply chain overload. And countries’ economies are slowing down due to COVID-19, impeding their ability to produce the goods consumers need.
As we embark on new food supply chain projects, we’re using our 2019 implementations as a guide.
One of those implementations started at our client’s headquarters in Colombia and ended in Canada. We placed IoT devices into trucks carrying coffee beans to one of the largest ports in South America. Those devices collected real-time measurements on the coffee beans throughout their journey. Key data points included temperature, humidity, GPS, time-stamp, light position, altitude, shock, and tampering.
The implementation was successful. Theseus provided end-to-end traceability, tracking coffee across five different countries, two oceans, and multiple time zones. The data delivered by the IoT devices showed that the coffee spent 52% of its time unmanaged or stagnant. All told, 85% of that time spent waiting resulted in fluctuations in temperature and humidity that were outside optimal targets, conditions which often lead to spoilage. By identifying inefficiencies using data, we showed our client how to improve its supply chain for future shipments.
Theseus also showed that it’s possible to track a shipment in near real-time, enabling stakeholders to compare against fluctuating commodity prices while en route. That tracking, combined with correlating Theseus data to commodity prices in real time, offers buyers and sellers the ability to negotiate pricing while a shipment is ongoing.
We’re also helping local governments around the world with Emerge’s public safety system, Civitas.
The system is designed to improve safety and cut store wait times by reducing gatherings in tight spaces, reducing the probability of contagion. It accounts for the specific capacity of each business, then assigns individual customers’ store access to set times, decreasing the number of people in circulation at any given time. It enables businesses to spot shortage problems or changes in inventory in real time, and to adjust customers’ circulation as needed.
By enabling authorities and businesses to manage distance, capacity, inventory, and disinfection protocols in stores, shopping will become far less nerve-wracking and far safer. That way, communities’ virus-blocking social distancing protocols won’t be rendered moot on the rare occasions when people are allowed out to shop. All told, the frequency with which people get exposed will fall sharply, thanks to fewer exits from homes, shorter distances traveled for shopping, and reduced circulation time.
In keeping with our constant focus on inclusion, Emerge’s public safety system is designed to benefit everyone, while factoring in the most vulnerable segments of the population.
Civitas is a text message-based approach that ensures that everyone, even those with phones that are not smartphones, is included. It gives the most economically vulnerable, the most medically at risk, and seniors the opportunity to indicate when they are ready to run errands. It also directs and specifies points for food delivery for charities and government-sponsored food welfare programs that assist them. The result is a system of critical response that considers the lack of economic and health resilience that the groups with the lowest incomes and highest probabilities of contagion face.
While the system’s output is low-tech enough to help the highest number of people, its inputs are cutting-edge, with smart contracts and blockchain technology helping to ensure public order and safety under otherwise chaotic conditions. While we’re starting by deploying the public safety system for food purchases, the technology is already being prepped to expand into healthcare, assisting with patient triage and care at hospitals and other medical facilities. It will help both governments and healthcare providers balance need, urgency, and capacity. An intelligent way to manage the number of people designated to specific hospitals may minimize the increasing burden on international public health sectors.
Finally, we’re deploying Trusted Voices, a blockchain-based platform that addresses the goals of media transparency and accuracy. Trusted Voices empowers, amplifies, and protects story-tellers, witnesses, and academic/scientific research, providing an immutable chain of custody for the source material used in today’s digitally native world.
With COVID-19 wreaking havoc on communities, misinformation campaigns are raging. Some of those threats include nationalist propaganda, reckless minimizing of the virus, and trolls spreading dangerous fake cures. The results have been frightening, ranging from deaths stemming from unproven medications to racism-fueled hate crimes. Information accuracy is vital for policy makers, news organizations, and citizens to make informed decisions.
Trusted Voices uses blockchain technology to track source material. That technology creates a secure chain of custody from the device used to capture or upload content to the final stage of usage on media platforms. Trusted Voices connects news media consumers directly with the people whose experiences and expertise are the foundation of the stories we see and hear in the news.
Trusted Voices launched as a response to another global catastrophe, the migrant crisis. Emerge Founder/CEO Lucia Gallardo and Penta CEO David Ritter visited the border town of Tijuana, Mexico in 2018 to hear from people who’d fled hardship in Central America to trek all the way to the U.S. border. There, they talked to dozens of migrants who’d made the journey, collecting first-hand accounts unsullied by media filters and narratives.
Today, Trusted Voices authenticates quotes, images, and video in their original, undoctored form. With COVID-19 touching every facet of society, everyone from media companies looking for verified source material, medical researchers aiming to protect their work, and governments seeking to send the right messages to concerned citizens stand to benefit from a platform that ensures secured, verifiable information.
By working with stakeholders ranging from supermarket chains and hospitals to SMEs, media outlets to scientists, international non-governmental organizations to government agencies, we will help communities stay safe and recover as quickly as possible from the health and economic damage caused by COVID-19.
Got a supply chain, public safety, or similar problem that needs immediate attention during the COVID-19 crisis? Looking to help our efforts? Email us at hello@emergedev.co.
