Blockchain Oracle for Healthcare Applications- Flux Protocol
The word “Oracle” could mean a whole number of things, it’s a word that has been in use for centuries.
In the case of blockchain landscapes, oracles serve as systems providing blockchain with information from the real world. What if you need to develop a smart contract for health insurance, blockchain-based medical record, and pharmaceutical supply chain? In this case, you would need a gateway to obtain information from the external world.
The most critical problem of blockchain and smart contracts is that they could not access data outside the network or off-chain data. For a smart contract to execute, it needs to be triggered, in most instant a real world data is needed for that execution, how sure are we that data in accurate and temper-proof? That’s where decentralized oracles comes in. As evident in the case of certain smart contract applications, some contractual agreements require important information from the external world for execution.
This is where you would need an oracle in blockchain. Oracles offer the link between on-chain and off-chain data while serving as significant elements in the blockchain space. Oracles could widen the scope for applications of smart contracts. Without them, a smart contract could access data only from within the network, thereby limiting functionalities.
Smart Contract
A smart contract basically facilitates the automatic execution of terms and conditions in an agreement upon compliance with specific conditions. In the case of blockchain technology, a smart contract could be just a self-executing code that helps in the automatic implementation of terms of the agreement in specific transactions between parties when the conditions are addressed. In comparison to traditional contracts, smart contracts do not depend on trusted third parties and also offer deterministic and immutable components.
How urgently do patients require MRI?
How often are patients left waiting and wondering if insurance will authorize the important test ordered by their doctor?
This process involves many steps, including a phone call or even an appeal after an initial denial, this is so obsolete. The slow manual processes requiring intermediaries are outdated.
Smart contracts pull pertinent data from the medical record that satisfies predetermined criteria, allowing authorization in minutes. The synchronization of workflows between entities and organizations removes inefficient manual processes, time delays, and lost data. Transactions are secure and anonymous, occurring rapidly instead of days, weeks, or months later.
Okay, smart contracts can do that, how sure are we the patient needs the MRI? Could the insurance company be so sure that the request is from a real doctor or just the patient trying to trigger the smart contract to release funds, the data fed to the smart contract to execute payment need to be reliable and trusted, a decentralized oracle could be the source of that accurate and trusted data that would trigger the smart contract.
The oracle could be connected with the Internet of Medical Things(IoMT) to provide live data and the health condition of the patient which the oracle sends to the smart contract to serve as the terms and conditions in an agreement for the smart contract to execute transaction once triggered, the contract would only execute upon available health data of the patient.
The Oracle Problem
The most important thing while thinking of a blockchain oracle is the reason for which we use blockchain. Why are we developing on-chain? Decentralization, of course! On the other hand, data needs to come from some source. If you want to import data from a particular source, node, or API, you basically destroy the complete purpose of blockchain. This establishes the foundation for the blockchain oracle problem.
Centralized oracles would actually imply that a single entity gains control over the smart contract, thereby making it similar to regular contracts. Furthermore, centralized oracles with the best intentions have also been subject to hacking attempts. In addition, they are also vulnerable to concerns of updates and lack of maintenance which can lead to disastrous circumstances.
Solution: Decentralized Oracle
To improve the trustworthiness of an oracle, a set of decentralised oracles could be used. Each oracle uses a separate server (i.e., off-chain component) and queries the data from an independent data source. Similar to the centralised oracle design, a transaction could then be submitted to the smart contract that wishes to use the data or on-chain component of the oracle (i.e., oracle smart contract). The smart contract can then determine the data submitted by a majority of oracles as the valid representation of real-world data/state.
Flux Protocol
Flux is the trustless data layer for web3. Flux is a cross-chain oracle that provides smart contracts with access to economically secure data feeds on anything.
Flux has created an oracle design that provides a totally decentralized infrastructure for accessing data on and off-chain. Validators stake FLX, the native utility token of Flux Protocol to provide data to the Oracle.
Flux Economically Secured Oracle enables protocols to request crowdsourced, API, and Price Feed Data from any on or off-chain source. Flux is partnered with top validator companies across crypto like Figment.
An interesting feature of Flux is the economic guarantee model behind the oracle, validators stake Flux tokens behind the data they believe is accurate, then there’s a dispute model built in which malicious act proving false data get their stakes slashed.
Flux use aggregated data from different oracles.
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