Facing the epidemic exam： blockchain technology continues to explore and advance

Science and technology is an important means to fight the COVID-19 epidemic. The sudden epidemic has pressed the "pause button" for many industries, and also pressed the "fast forward button" for the digital economy.

The integrated application of blockchain technology plays an important role in new technological innovation and industrial transformation. Telemedicine, sunshine donation, bidding on the cloud … Blockchain technology uses its characteristics of decentralization, non-tampering, traceability, etc., and tries to prevent and control the epidemic situation and resume production. However, as a new technology, blockchain also exposed problems such as weak foundation and insufficient coordination in the epidemic examination.

The key to medical data sharing and epidemic prevention materials traceability blockchain opens the door to trust.

At the end of March, Mr. Xu, a resident of Shou ‘an Town, Pujiang County, Sichuan Province, developed a cough and fever and went to the county hospital nearby. Different from the past, Mr. Xu’s diagnostic data was labeled as "invisible label". With the help of blockchain technology, experts from Chengdu Third Hospital participated in online consultation, which quickly ruled out the possibility that Mr. Xu was infected with COVID-19.

"We have few local medical resources. I didn’t expect to let the provincial doctors see a doctor directly this time." Mr. Xu still feels novel when he recalls that medical experience. The telemedicine platform of the Third Hospital of Chengdu enables hospitals in areas with underdeveloped medical resources to quickly diagnose suspected cases.

What is the difference between blockchain telemedicine platforms? An Hongzhang, general manager of China Netan Blockchain R&D Center, explained: "The allocation of diagnostic income and data income, the definition of medical accident responsibility and data leakage responsibility are the blocking points of telemedicine. The essence of these obstacles is mutual distrust among medical institutions, and blockchain is used to solve trust problems."

Blockchain, which is characterized by decentralization, high transparency and non-tampering, provides a solution to the problems of data authenticity and responsibility definition, and this "key" of trust is not only used in telemedicine. Looking back at the beginning of the epidemic, there were some problems such as inefficient handling of donated materials and chaotic management in some places. How to realize the transparency of the whole process of epidemic prevention materials has become a challenge, and blockchain technology can make every step of donation traceable and supervised.

During the epidemic, the Second Hospital of Zhejiang University, which rushed to Hubei, urgently needed a batch of video collaboration equipment for remote consultation. On February 15th, Hangzhou Chengyun Technology (China) Co., Ltd. mobilized resources and donated video collaboration equipment to support remote consultation. Every circulation link of this donation information is recorded in detail on a blockchain platform initiated by Fun Chain Technology and China Xiong ‘an Group Digital City Company.

"The characteristic of the blockchain is that once it is released, it cannot be tampered with or deleted. A donation allows all sectors of society to fully supervise. We also improve the content of donation information and introduce multi-dimensional information disclosure methods such as logistics sheets, real shots of materials, and donation details to ensure the effectiveness of certification information. " Zhang Shuai, operation director of Hangzhou Fun Chain Technology Co., Ltd. said.

The reporter learned that in Shandong, Hebei, Guangdong and other places, there have also been epidemic prevention and control platforms equipped with blockchain technology, and the winding of epidemic information has strengthened the responsibility of information reporting.

Bidding on the cloud and virtual credit card blockchain inject a "booster" into the resumption of work and production.

Support the "zero contact" signing of electronic contracts, establish a mutual trust mechanism between the upstream and downstream of the supply chain, unblock the capital chain industry chain to solve the financing difficulties of small and medium-sized enterprises, and blockchain helps enterprises that return to work to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

In the past, due to information exchange, confidentiality management and contract signing, the bidding work was completed in always online. Recently, under the requirements of epidemic prevention and control, blockchain is testing water to become a "safe" for online trading information.

On February 10th, Gansu Provincial Public Resources Trading Bureau launched an online bid evaluation system to realize "bidding on the cloud". Three days after the system was launched, the online bid opening of 11 tenders of 7 traffic construction projects was completed, and more than 50 bidding enterprises participated, with a transaction amount of 1.62 billion yuan.

Li Guoren, director of the bid opening organization department of Gansu Provincial Public Resources Trading Bureau, said that all electronic data were stamped with immutable "time stamps" in the 12 trading links from enterprise bidding, expert bid evaluation to publicity results, and the transactions were automatically executed through smart contracts, so that the frozen work during the epidemic period gradually resumed. In the past, it took more than 10 hours for 100 investment enterprises to organize the bid opening on site, but now it only takes 10 minutes.

During the epidemic, many small and medium-sized enterprises were short of capital chains and faced difficulties in resuming work and production.

"Affected by the epidemic, the company’s resumption of work and production was postponed, and accounts receivable failed to pay back on schedule. The company’s main raw materials, steel, are purchased in full, resulting in tight liquidity in the first quarter. " Liu Jingtao, general manager of Shandong Ludian Line Equipment Co., Ltd. said. Since then, the company initiated a loan application through the supply chain financial service platform of State Grid E-commerce Company, and uploaded purchase orders, accounts receivable documents and other materials according to the system guidance, and successfully loaned 2 million yuan.

Dong Wang, head of State Grid Blockchain Technology Co., Ltd., said: "Because the operation records of each loan will be stored in financial institutions synchronously, risk control events can be found in time, the financial risk of’ one loan for more’ can be avoided, and trust can be transformed into confidence. Using blockchain technology, we have realized enterprise information sharing, transparency and process visualization in the power grid supply chain, so that small and medium-sized enterprises can obtain accurate financial support. "

In addition to financing, bidding and other applications, the blockchain of creditor’s rights and debts platform, real estate registration information platform and credit "green channel" has also appeared in Beijing, Zhejiang and other places, providing new ideas for resuming work and production.

Blockchain application still needs to be explored and infrastructure construction needs to be improved.

Compared with new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, the application of blockchain technology in epidemic situation is still in its infancy. Many interviewed experts believe that blockchain technology is actively looking for appropriate business application scenarios, and core technical issues still need to be broken.

"Due to the lack of cross-regional data sharing and technical collaboration platforms, the blockchain technical standards in different provinces and cities are different, and the data coordination of multi-party entities is difficult. At present, the nationwide data exchange on the’ health code’ chain has not been realized." An Hongzhang said that the blockchain should have become the key technology to solve the problem of mutual trust in health data among provincial migrants, so the infrastructure construction of the blockchain should be promoted.

In addition, blockchain technology still lacks "killer" applications to promote more industries to achieve "blockchain+".

"The large-scale application of blockchain, the most important thing is to solve the integration of offline system and online system. At present, this technology has just started, and it also faces basic technical bottlenecks such as performance and privacy protection, and faces difficulties such as limited cooperation with other technologies. " Zhang Shuai said.

Dong Wang believes that the blockchain can mainly solve four problems: first, it can solve the problem of fairness, justice and openness; second, it can solve the problem of great collaboration and cooperation between upstream and downstream industries; third, it can solve the problem of data generation, confirmation and exchange; and fourth, it can solve the problem of tamper prevention and strong supervision in production safety.

However, the application of blockchain is still in its infancy, and various application models still need to be continuously explored. On the one hand, the blockchain technology is not mature in terms of system stability and application security. On the other hand, it is costly for customers to join the blockchain system.

Zhu Yan, president of Tsinghua University Internet Industry Research Institute, believes that the development of blockchain needs more policy environment and industrial ecology.

(Original title: Epidemic Test: How many points can blockchain technology get)