Genobank, a blockchain project endeavoring to provide customers ownership and power over their DNA data, is planning to launch an app on EOS-powered blockchain platform Telos to assist people in obtaining anonymous coronavirus examination.

According to a recent declaration from the Telos Foundation, the app will also enable users to bestow that information with healthcare organizations. The open-source app, Agerona, assembles the test data on the Telos blockchain, with Genobank, to incorporate a token that facilitates data sharing. The app is deemed to launch this month.

Privacy concerns could hinder health efforts

Some authorities have expressed interest that undocumented workers and individuals residing in a country without permission could evade treatment or diagnosis over worries that they would be imprisoned or deported. 

Angerona will promote buying from associate test suppliers. Users can scan a unique barcode on each test to connect the results with an anonymous account on Telos managed by the user.

Test kits can then be transferred to an associate lab for analysis, with results anonymously uploaded to the Telos blockchain. If implemented, the data will involve the user’s country and postcode to trace the spread of the coronavirus.

For Geobank chief executive Daniel Uribe, the principal project mission is to equip people with a way to obtain coronavirus tests privately and securely.

“People have the right to know if they have the coronavirus without violating their privacy,” Uribe says.

Agerona project garners contributors in four countries

While Genobank and Telos originally collaborated to produce the testing service for employment in the United States, the project now has contributors in the United Kingdom, Israel, and Iran — with expectations of expanding into more jurisdictions.

The project is slated to produce a “mobile app for users, a processing interface for laboratories, privacy-ensuring blockchain architecture, and sourcing and logistics solutions for low-cost COVID-19 tests and processing.”

Agerona intends to start soon an innovative feature in which AI-based diagnostic tools are employed to examine sound clips of people coughing.

Coronavirus pandemic showcases data-sharing characteristics of DLT

DLT (Distributed ledger technologies) has seen various applications in the course of data sharing and aggregation amongst the global coronavirus relief efforts.

On March 27, the blockchain platform Algorand launched its ‘IReportCovid’ survey app. The platform promotes respondents both healthy and sick to take the test regularly as their symptoms switch to trace the spread and significant tendencies of the virus. 

Each individual must reply from a single IP address. Algorand shortly intends to release data analysis tools to provide a public examination of the aggregated data.

The Chinese central government has also utilized blockchain to track and aggregate medical data.