Blockchain4Awareness

With no vaccine or remedy, masks and other basic protective measures are our only barriers against COVID-19. However, the public has been increasingly exposed to disinformation about these protective measures and is lacking the proper fact-checking tools. Additionally, the sudden surge in demand has resulted in increased exposure to counterfeit or deceptively labelled products.

In order to address these issues, we have developed an information management platform for fact checking by implementing a Blockchain-based solution, ensuring traceability and security by providing an incorruptible ledger allowing for each actor of the supply chain to verify the product they are buying, its rightful owner.

Our solution will provide medical supplies manufacturers a valuable tool to fight revenue losses incurred by counterfeited products. Hospitals and retailers will be able to verify the trustworthiness of their suppliers and manufacturers, and end-consumers will gain access to data encompassing the entire supply-chain with trustworthy information.

In the current health crisis, the WHO has recommended the public to wear masks when sick or attending to someone who is sick. However, multiple organisations worldwide such as the CDC have recommended the voluntary use of face covering when in public.

This has led to a shortage of masks for healthcare workers (NPR), price surges and thefts. Consequently, governments and companies have turned to unproven vendors to order these essential supplies, sometime lacking official license from medical authorities. These situations have occurred around the globe and will worsen with the economy reopening as people will be required to wear masks to work and public settings.

With no vaccine or remedy, masks and other basic protective measures are, and will continue to be, our only barriers against the virus (vaccine 12 to 18 months away). Governing bodies and the public have been increasingly exposed to disinformation and misinformation about these protective measures and are lacking the proper fact checking tools. To help in the current and future health crisis, we need an information management platform for fact checking to ensure traceability of reliable medical supplies.

Blockchain4Awareness have develop an information management platform for fact checking by implementing a Blockchain-based solution addressing the issues around counterfeit or deceptively labelled Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) lacking federal certifications for safety standards. Permissioned reliable users will be invited to register in the blockchain, on which they will be allowed to list their products, change the product ownership (if current owner), and consult the product’s owners’ chronology. End consumers will be able to consult the products’ ownership chronology by scanning a QR code printed by the manufacturer on the product or lot. By using a blockchain, we ensure traceability and security by providing an incorruptible ledger allowing for each actor of the supply chain to verify the product they are buying. The Blockchain also allows for transparency of the rightful owner and manufacturer ID as well as security of the data recorded on an incorruptible distributed ledger.

By identifying them the first recorded owner, manufacturers will be provided with a valuable tool in fighting against revenue losses incurred by counterfeited products. Wholesalers and distributors will benefit from a reliable tool to access governmentally approved list of products and manufacturers. Hospitals and retailers will benefit as we help them verify the trustworthiness of their suppliers and manufacturers, as well as minimize the theft of their medical supplies by authenticating them as the rightful owners. End-consumers will gain access to data encompassing the entire supply-chain with trustworthy information about the product’s quality.

In addition to ensuring the access to trustworthy crucial supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, our solution plans to play a wider role in educating the public on the best practices to protect themselves and others. When scanning the QR code on the product, they will be informed that whilst non-respiratory masks might not fully protect them and rather create a fake sense of security, buying respiratory masks directly and negatively affect healthcare workers’ ability to access these supplies. Finally, as consumers become aware of the length of the supply chain of most products they consume, they might be enticed to turn to shorter supply circuits.

The current health crisis has revealed critical vulnerabilities in the medical supplies supply chain resulting in sometime inadequate key safeguards for health workers and improper individual hygiene of the public in general.

By implementing our solution, governmental agencies, retailers and consumers will be able to more easily acquire the proper tools to fighting the coronavirus pandemic and similar future potential disease outbreaks.

Currently, 3M help consumers verify the genuineness of their products with its ‘3M Safe Guard™ process’. Consumers are invited to enter a code situated on the product box on the company’s website in order to assess whether or not the product was manufactured by them. 3M has developed this process in order to ‘help protect your people, your reputation and your company’. However, whilst this solution allows for end-customers to verify a product’s genuineness, it does not offer 3M a viable solution to fighting counterfeiting. Thus, malicious organizations could use existing codes and print them on their supplies.

With our solution, end-customers will be able to track the entire supply chain of their product and identify whether or not their supplier is the rightful owner of this actual product or product lot, adding an additional layer to ‘protecting people’. In the case where a malicious organization had copied the QR code on their product, end-consumers will be informed that whilst this product number has been created by 3M, it is owned by a completely different organization, and therefore shouldn’t be bought from the malicious supplier.

By using a blockchain, we ensure traceability and security by providing an incorruptible ledger allowing for each actor of the supply chain to verify the product they are buying, thus improving efficiency and reducing costs of accessing these data.

The Blockchain also allows for transparency of the rightful owner and manufacturer ID as well as security of the data recorded on an incorruptible distributed ledger

We chose the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain for its permissioned membership features preventing impersonation, its modular architecture supporting plug-in components and its low energy consensus with no token needed.

Blockchain technology and its track and trace applications have the potential to improve supply chain management by allowing for transparency and products’ traceability.

Using blockchain technology allows to record prices, dates, locations, quality and certifications of products along the entire supply chain. Providing these readily available information allows to fight against counterfeiting, impersonating, and misinformation.

For example, in the energy industry, Shell is developing a blockchain platform to track down fake products, allowing the company to track its product from production to customers. As the products move between parties, each can confirm they are receiving genuine products, and Shell can track and monitor supplies worldwide more easily and more securely than currently possible, enabling additional ways for the company to fight against counterfeiting of their products.

Blockchain4Awareness have develop an information management platform for fact checking by implementing a Blockchain-based solution addressing the issues around counterfeit or deceptively labelled Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) lacking federal certifications for safety standards. Permissioned reliable users will be invited to register in the blockchain, on which they will be allowed to list their products, change the product ownership (if current owner), and consult the product’s owners’ chronology. End consumers will be able to consult the products’ ownership chronology by scanning a QR code printed by the manufacturer on the product or lot. By using a blockchain, we ensure traceability and security by providing an incorruptible ledger allowing for each actor of the supply chain to verify the product they are buying. The Blockchain also allows for transparency of the rightful owner and manufacturer ID as well as security of the data recorded on an incorruptible distributed ledger.

By identifying them the first recorded owner, manufacturers will be provided with a valuable tool in fighting against revenue losses incurred by counterfeited products. Wholesalers and distributors will benefit from a reliable tool to access governmentally approved list of products and manufacturers. Hospitals and retailers will benefit as we help them verify the trustworthiness of their suppliers and manufacturers, as well as minimize the theft of their medical supplies by authenticating them as the rightful owners. End consumers will gain access to data encompassing the entire supply chain with trustworthy information about the product’s quality.

In addition to ensuring the access to trustworthy crucial supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, our solution plans to play a wider role in educating the public on the best practices to protect themselves and others. When scanning the QR code on the product, they will be informed that whilst non-respiratory masks (such as N95) might not fully protect them and rather create a fake sense of security, buying respiratory directly and negatively affect healthcare workers’ ability to access these supplies. By improving the healthcare supply chain, our solution offers support and protection to health workers around the globe.

Blockchain4Awareness is currently reaching out to multiple governmental agencies such as the FEMA, ordering millions of dollars of respiratory masks, the FDA, whose GUDID lists all FDA approved medical supplies and the DHS, in charge of combating trafficking in counterfeit goods. By presenting our solution to addressing the issues around counterfeit or deceptively labelled PPE lacking federal certifications for safety standards, we hope to be impacting the 18 million healthcare worker in the USA (CDC) as well as 275m USA smartphone users that will be able to consult the entire supply chain with information about the product’s quality and ownership chronology by scanning a QR code printed on the product.

We are planning on scaling horizontally to multiple countries in a short amount of time. Due to the easy transferability of our software, 3.5 billions smartphone users in the world (45.04% of the world population) could quickly and easily adopt it. Additionally, we are planning on scaling vertically by integrating more products gradually, starting with face masks, crucial as workplace and public transport guidance recommend their use.

In developing countries, where only 25.39% of the population have access to smartphones, a simple internet connection will suffice to access the information contained on our blockchain by following the URL/link printed under the QR code. Hospitals and pharmacies could thus benefit from the solution.

Currently, we are planning on developing functions for the authentication of reliable manufacturers, distributors and retailers, the QR code generator linked to the add product function (for manufacturers) and the possibility of integrating our product within users’ existing CRM solutions.

With the support of key actors such as US governmental agencies and the main medical supplies manufacturers, our solution will be implemented within a year. Once implemented, we will be able to reached out to additional medical supplies manufacturer and governmental agencies worldwide. 

Currently, our main issues are:

• Financial: We are lacking the necessary financial resources to working full-time on our solution, delaying its technical development.
• Lack of track record of winning bids as Federal Government Contractor: to facilitate the implementation of our solution, we would ideally need the support of the FDA and DHS. 

To overcome these barriers, we are actively participating in challenges such as MIT solve to gain potential financial support needed to accelerate the development of our solution, which would be used to hire additional blockchain developers.

In addition, we are confident that we will be able to work with US governmental agencies. These agencies award at least 23 percent of those contracts to small businesses.

I am currently working part-time on the solution with two other entrepreneurs working part-time as well.

Florian is an MBA graduate and independent consultant. He has worked with startups and helped them develop sustainable strategies to compete in their respective industries.

Anne-Marie is serial entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Uziit, a French startup developing blockchain solutions, and ZigZag Marketing. She is a marketing professor at the Université de Toulon and Icademie. She also is a published author in the domain of marketing for SMEs.

Jérémie is the co-founder and CTO of Uziit. He is a blockchain developer, big data engineer and developer and lead developer. He also is a DevOps professor at Icademie.

Blockchain4Awareness is currently reaching out to several groups of partners:  

• US governmental agencies: the FDA would provide a valuable partner to identifying reliable medical supplies manufacturer with its GUDID list, the DHS whose efforts to combating trafficking in counterfeit goods could benefit from our solution, and FEMA that has been experiencing difficulties acquiring respiratory masks for US healthcare workers.
• Prominent medical supplies manufacturer: 3M, Sensi, Honeywell in the need for help to fight counterfeiting and trademark infringements. For example, 3M existing solution could greatly benefit from implementing our technology.  

Once our solution implemented, we are planning on working with international healthcare influencers, health worker unions, and local (New York) hospitals and pharmacies.

Our solution aims to be freely available for healthcare worker and the public that will be able to consult the information contained in our blockchain by simply scanning the our codes printed on the medical supplies.

We will charge manufacturers (fighting revenue losses incurred by counterfeited products) a one-time installation fee as well as recurring fees based on the usage of our product (to host blockchain nods and data) and maintenance costs.

Becoming a solver for MIT Solve would enable us to carry out the development of our solution in a timely manner that would directly impact the current health crisis. Our peers and the MIT network could represent an invaluable help in further developing our technical solution and reflect around a business model that would not only allows our organization to become profitable, but also help us in using our benefits to further develop social programs within the company.

Bey being provided with both the knowledge and financial aids of the Solve community, we are confident that our solution will help prevent and mitigate the current and future disease outbreaks. 

Our innovation will undoubtedly participate in supporting and protecting health workers by providing them with trustworthy necessary resources to fighting pandemics, in informing governments and hospitals decision-making when it comes to selecting trustworthy vendors listed on our website, and finally in educating the public on the best hygiene practices to prevent infections.