Children are the future and it is the responsibility of adults to protect them and ensure that they get the best footing in life. Unfortunately this is not always the case in many nations around the world – including our own! Can blockchain make childcare better?

India has highest number of deaths of children under five years of age, with 50% of such deaths caused mainly due to malnutrition.

In India, 1.2 million children are still dying before reaching their fifth birthday per year, dropping from 3.4 million in 1990. Given the large under-five population and its relatively high mortality rate, India has the largest number of under-five deaths in the world, accounting for 20% of global under-five deaths.

How could blockchain technology be used as a tool for improving program quality and tracking, committing towards making child better.

Digital id registration:

While registration, following details can be recorded to uniquely identify a new born;

Blood report and/or foot scan of the new born would be recorded , whereas recording parent’s (or guardians) biometric and government issued document. This combination of along with the new born’s date of birth and hospital identification code will create an unique digital identity for the new born and which would be recorded on the block.

A physical identification card containing this unique identity would be received by the parent

Routine Check ups

Routine checkups can be arranged at a set frequency (say 1 month). Prior to the check the guardian would receive an intimation through the necessary means of registered communication channel.

On the day of check up, to ensure the right combination of guardian and new born are present, identification is carried out with the help of details which were used during registration for the guardian (biometric reference and government id) and the baby(foot scan). This will ensure that no proxy is carried out.

Once the assigned physician has completed the checkup he/ she digitally signs the medical report after which the record is updated and saved on the block against the baby.

The following checkups would be done by a different doctor, to insure that medical data aren’t falsified.

The advantages of regular medical check ups will ensure that the baby is in good health, necessary vaccinations are carried out and also the baby isnt under any serious health risk.

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No Turn up Tracking

The system will trigger initial communication to the guardian’s registered communication means a week prior to the check up.

In case there is no turn up of the guardian and the baby on the day of check up, another communication would be triggered a day after and the guardian will keep on receiving these communications on alternate days. This will continue for next two more occurrence and if still there is no turn up, the necessary authorities would be intimidated about this and the guardian along with the baby would be tracked.

The tracking can be done with the help of the government id’s. For example if the guardian is registered his/ her aadhaar card (which now is also linked to all bank accounts). With the help of the common id present on both sides, the check would be carried out on the last transactions on the bank account (linked to the aadhaar card) and the area of the last transaction can also be notified the local authorities.

The example can be simplified by the below figure, which shows the hospital, bank and the police authorities working in a closed consortium network. Due to the daily routine medical check ups and tracking will ensure that the issues related not only to child malnutrition could be reduced but also issues related to child safety like child abuse are also addressed.