“In 2009, researchers fighting the H1N1 swine flu pandemic were kept up to date via a chain of information transmitted from individual secure desktops. This procedure required each scientist to read thousands of physical pages of information — some of which they’d already seen — to remain current on drug trials and data from healthcare providers and hospitals.”
“When the virus began to re-emerge in 2017, officials at the Food and Drug Administration knew they needed a better way to track data dealing with the outbreak, and deployed blockchain technology as an assist.”
“’We designed an application that enabled us to acquire automatically encrypted data, in real time, from many sources, and have an absolute record for all the participants,’ says Dr. Henry Francis, associate director for data mining and informatics evaluation and research at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research…”
Can Blockchain Offer a Management Advantage?
“The Department of Treasury’s Office of Financial Innovation and Transformation (FIT) made an initial foray into blockchain in 2017, with a small proof-of-concept project that tracked mobile devices.”
“The agency followed with another proof of concept that used the technology to manage software licenses, and conducted a third project in conjunction with the National Science Foundation to test whether the use of blockchain could improve grant payment processes…”
“The Department of Health and Human Services has launched HHS Accelerate, an infrastructure using distributed ledger technology and designed to increase the agency’s bulk purchasing power, reduce its reporting burden, cut costs for industry partners and improve record keeping for vendor transactions.”
“Using blockchain enabled the agency to award a contract that is expected to cost $30 million less than it would have without that method of analysis, HHS CIO Jose Arrieta said in February. (Arrieta resigned in August.)” Read the full article here.
Source: Blockchain Makes Inroads at Federal Agencies – By Tommy Peterson, August 26, 2020. FedTech Magazine.
