Blockchain and Pandemic, Part II
Last week, we compiled a lot of suggestions for how disease control, health care, and financial support for impacted citizens can all be improved through blockchain technology. This week, we’ll go into more detail on smart contracts and how they can improve a weak and inefficient system.
It was enormously encouraging to hear New York’s governor last week echoing a sentiment first expressed in this column last Monday — that equipment and personnel aimed at fighting the coronavirus, such as ventilators and nurses, could follow the track of the epidemic around the country, as surges and spikes create exceptional demand.
Of course if all those resources were being tracked in the blockchain, it would be so much easier to do. But sharing our ideas regardless of whether or not they can be immediately deployed is how we will arrive at more useful and effective methods at combating this deadly illness and any future threat.
Procuring supplies
As the world scrambles for test kits, protective equipment, and critical care items such as ventilators, workers on the front lines, procurement specialists, and governments are coming face to face with a series of “walls” that have always been barriers in any sort of worldwide trade.
When it comes to medical equipment and protective gear, you deal with standards worldwide that do not match up. Supplies need to be manufactured to specifications that change from region to region, meaning you can’t just take stuff made for the European Union and send it here, where we follow the guidelines of the FDA. There is also the risk that profiteers will manufacture counterfeit goods to take advantage of the urgent need and disrupt the whole supply chain.
Another difficulty is, knowing for certain the identity of your customer. If I had the cash, could I corner the market on PPE gowns and control both the available supply and the per-item cost?
Honoring contracts
Then there is the particularly unsettling issue of knowing for certain when a deal is a deal. The nation’s governors have complained almost daily that they are in competition with each other, with the federal government, and with health professionals around the world for the same equipment and supplies, and that it seems no matter what they offer, the price gets bid up by someone on the other line.
Once a deal has been consummated, there are issues that have forever plagued moving goods internationally. Currency transfers, letters of credit from a bank proving availability of funds for the purchase, international and regional inspections and endorsements as goods travel around the globe, safe handling certifications and chain of custody assurances… they have always been hard nuts to crack, made even more tricky when medical supplies with all their special transportation needs are factored into the mix — medical supplies that the entire world finds are in short supply and whose value could be inestimable.
How smart contracts can help
Blockchain isn’t a panacea, but the application of smart contracts to providing and securing medical needs would go a long way in streamlining the process.
Once written, smart contracts eliminate much of the need for middlemen and women to implement them. For instance, my component demands for a test kit would be a part of the contract and would only recognize offers that assured those items were included. I wouldn’t have to go on faith that individuals I might not know or might not have done business with in the past could be providing substandard equipment.
Since no detail of a smart contract can be unilaterally changed, buyers will have greater confidence that promises from sellers are binding. Since every step of the contract clicks into place in turn, as soon as the deal is made those goods are unsellable to someone else and the money is delivered.
Reputable blockchain companies will put in place proper Know Your Customer (KYC) practices, so unscrupulous dealers and brokers will be edged out of the equation. And there will be limited opportunities for theft, fraud, and mistakes along the way as goods move through the transport system. With speedy and agreed upon exchange of value between the buyer and seller, fees and delays can be vastly reduced.
With the whole world searching for solutions to this epidemic, having a more reliable way to search, lock in solutions, and feel confident about delivery of needs will take us a long, long way.
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