We Need a Village of Blockchain Users as Springboard for Development, says mediXServe CEO
At the official launch of Ateneo-MediXserve Blockchain Education and Research Laboratory (AMBERLab) — the Philippines’ first university-based blockchain research laboratory — on 22 October 2018, partners mediXserve and Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) expressed their vision to use blockchain technology for nation-building.
Blockchain is a decentralized ledger that stores digital data cryptographically. The blockchain ecosystem in the Philippines, however, is still in its nascent stage. Thus, there is a need to promote the strategic implications of the blockchain technology to business and institutional leaders.
For this reason, AMBERLab is focusing on community building among corporations and the academe as well as government agencies and nongovernmental organizations.
“Individual startups or businesses cannot do research and development [on blockchain] alone. It takes a “village” — a community of business, academe, universities and nongovernmental organizations to use blockchain as a springboard for our country’s development,” said mediXserve Founder and CEO Jorge “Jojy” Azurin.
AMBERLab’s Executive Director Regina Estuar, PhD, likewise expressed the research laboratory’s contribution to development. “The IT that we are developing in this university is a different scape because we want to develop IT practitioners who code with a heart; [who] know who they are writing for, and therefore we serve in this nation-building. So we focus on health, disaster, transportation, and every complex problem that every ordinary Filipino takes on every single day of his or her life,” she said.
AMBERLab has three other focus areas: It offers education/training and serves as an incubation center. As a think tank, it accepts financing support for research on the use of blockchain technology for social good, particularly to develop reusable blockchain-enabled services. Topics may be on health and wellness, government, financial inclusion, agriculture, and education.
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