World’s First Blockchain Baby is Registered for Care with AID:Tech and PharmAccess
Irish blockchain aid organisation AID:Tech makes history by registering the world’s first blockchain baby in Tanzania, in partnership with Dutch organisation PharmAccess, in an effort to improve access to healthcare throughout Africa.
Entitled Chain of Trust (CoT), the project aims to utilise the immutability and security of blockchain technology to help vulnerable women with their medical information, ensuring both mother and baby receive necessary healthcare, medication and vaccinations.
Launched in April this year, CoT issues a digital ID to track the journey of a pregnant women from her first hospital visit at 16 weeks, monitoring her antenatal care, the delivery, and subsequent postnatal care. Monique Dolfing, CEO of PharmAccess said:
“Our partnership with AID:Tech allows us to address the challenges associated with current practices, while improving the lives of the patients. This project demonstrates a transparent, innovative, performance-based financing model for healthcare.”
The first blockchain baby was recorded on the 13th of July, followed by two more births recorded on the 19th of this year. Commenting on the announcement, Niall Dennehy, Co-Founder and COO of AID:Tech said:
“From a lack of healthcare funding to high child and maternal mortality rates, there are a number of challenges present within the healthcare system in Tanzania, all of which can and will be combated.”
CEO Joseph Thompson, co-founded AID:Tech after his donation of over $100,000, which he raised by running 151 miles through the Sahara desert in the 2009 ‘Marathon de Sables’, was “lost” by a charity instead of being distributed to the groups that they help.
Launching in 2015, AID:Tech partnered with the Irish Red Cross to conduct a live pilot of its system developed on the Hyperledger Fabric platform, becoming the world’s first delivery of international aid using blockchain technology.
Distributing $10,000 to 100 Syrian refugee families in Lebanon, 500 digital credit cards were registered on AID:Tech’s blockchain, each preloaded with $20. Within hours, the system managed to successfully detect and deter fraudulent copies.
AID:Tech’s pioneering use of digital identity and blockchain to revolutionise how governments, enterprises and NGOs deliver digital entitlements, saw it named by the United Nations as one of the ten Sustainable Development Goal Pioneers in 2017.
Since seeing success in the regulation of the charitable industry, AID:Tech has attracted a flurry of investment from Techstars, Enterprise Ireland, SGI Innovate, and renowned American Angel investor, Jason Calacanis.
The unprecedented attention of the world’s first blockchain baby on the CoT platform, has also led to grant funding from Rockefeller and Expo2020, a Universal Exposition to be hosted in October 2020 in Dubai.
