UAE telco du reveals plans for health blockchain solution

UAE telecoms operator du has announced plans to build the UAE’s first ‘patient safety’ blockchain solution in collaboration with Dhonor HealthTech.

The blockchain platform as a service (BPaaS) use case will ensure “high security and transparency of data”, allowing for “a patient-centric approach to blockchain in healthcare”, a statement said.

It will incorporate direct communication with key stakeholders, access to healthcare resources, and verification of authentic medicines.

The data will give all stakeholders access to information, including the origin, state, and viability of use for medical products.

The solution is based on NFC tags standards that enable access to blockchain solution in order to verify if blood bags and pharmaceutical products are authentic across the medical supply chain, du said.

It will therefore “ensure patient’s safety and solve the problems of many patients encountering counterfeit medications and wait times for trusted blood bags”, the statement added.

Jihad Tayara, vice president of Business Development and Partnerships at du, said: “BPaaS provides immense scalability, compatibility and cost efficiencies, but it also ensures high security and transparency of sensitive data. In the healthcare sector, protecting patient data is paramount, hence the next deployment of BPaaS within the healthcare sector will contribute towards saving countless lives and raising the quality of care that patients receive.”

Wassim Merheby, Dhonor Healthtech CEO and co-founder added: “By adopting blockchain into our everyday operations, this will be an important step towards the digitisation of the UAE’s healthcare sector and will revolutionise patient-centricity.”

The latest announcement comes after du partnered with ConsenSys to build the UAE’s first BPaaS at GITEX technology week 2018.

This was showcased with a solution that used smart contract capabilities to facilitate and automate the process of document and certificate attestation by government entities.

The Dubai government is aiming to go completely paperless by the end of 2021 and use blockchain for all applicable government documents by 2020.

Read: Dubai to use blockchain technology for all government documents by 2020

In the wider, UAE the goal is for 50 per cent of government transactions to use blockchain by 2021.

Read: UAE aims to use blockchain for 50% of government transactions