Can the UN help speed up adoption of blockchain ideas for social good?
Innovation never (or rarely) happens inside rigid institutions with complicated structures. Rules and laws bend slowly. People wish for change but they don’t like to change. Nonetheless, change is inevitable and anytime a new technology or social trend starts gaining popularity, governments and institutions need to adapt.
The United Nations wish to be at the forefront of understanding and adapting to changes triggered by new technologies. Last year, the United Nations General Assembly established a Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development, which on June 4th, 2018 organized the first Blockchain for Impact Summit.
The Summit was a closed event rounding up investors, providers, industry leaders and various domain experts with the aim to “educate, encourage and inspire,” as Sergio Fernander de Cordova — Chairman of PVBLIC Foundation, mentioned in the beginning. The UN wants to be “agile and 21st century ready”, said Amir Dossal, President of the Global Partnerships Forum in his opening remarks.
If the 17 Goals for Sustainable Development by 2030, designed in 2015 by the General Assembly wish to be fulfilled, these kinds of events are a much-needed activity, if the ideas “to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all” are to come to fruition.
I was invited to participate because our healthcare IT company Iryo is active in refugee camps in the Middle East. While our core company focus is to take away the burden of data toxicity from various healthcare providers by providing them with a blockchain supported protocol enabling the highest quality of healthcare data security and data management, we recently deployed the first version of an electronic health records system for refugees in the Middle East.
The EHR system is tailor-made for the needs of refugees in the Middle East, but the underlying structure supports important healthcare paradigm shifts we’re still waiting to see in the digitized 21st century: portable and accessible digital medical records, owned by the patients (to learn more or be on top of our progress, follow us on Medium, Twitter, Linkedin or subscribe to our newsletter).
By the end of the day, it was clear that awareness about blockchain technology still needs a lot of education and clarification. Too much hope streams from misunderstandings of the actual capabilities of this new technology, which is sturdy, but far from a silver bullet for all the problems. Or as Maja Vujinovic, CEO of O Group put it: “You can’t solve poverty, or any other problem, with blockchain, unless you have a conscious decision to solve a poverty problem.”
Perhaps the understanding is still shaky, but no matter the area of application, the revolutionary aspiration of the blockchain technology is the underlying shake-up of existing beliefs around the structure of society and interactions among people.
“The world is interdependent, interconnected. The reality we live in is socially constructed. Technology is questioning and changing the nature of distribution of social and financial power. Technology will change the nature of the nation-state, the nature of wealth. We are redefining the social and financial structure of the world, and blockchain is a platform for social and economic progress,” were the inspiring words of Dennis John Kucinich, an American politician, former U.S. Representative from Ohio, who gave a keynote speech at the end of the Summit.
While the traditional political structures are not agile in innovating with blockchain, blockchain is clearly taken more and more seriously as an agent of social change.
The next Blockchain for Impact Summit is planned to take place end of this year in Uganda.
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