Blockchain during COVID-19: The Technology to Help Society

At the end of 2019, a new coronavirus was reported in the form of unknown pneumonia: It was the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. It is crucial to develop the strategies to manage this new pandemic in order to improve their effectiveness, as opposed to the ones adopted in 2003 during the SARS pandemic. In 17 years, new digital technologies and tools have been created; therefore, we can take advantage of them in the social management of the pandemic. The aim of our paper is to evaluate how blockchain technology can be used and what advantages it brings in managing an emergency situation such as of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the effects of the adoption of this technology will be assessed when applied both to the management of the information flow between health infrastructures, and to track monetary, technical, and medical supply donations to hospital structures. We therefore propose a high-level, decentralized architecture that assists in administrating large-scale information and stores the gathered data in a blockchain supervised by the authorities. The distrust suffered by institutions today, the fear experienced in the last year due to the pandemic, and the birth of a technology that allows for the creation of reliable networks, pose thoughtful challenges to be faced to recover trust and hope for the future again.

Automated summary

The article discusses how blockchain technology can be utilized in managing emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic and highlights its advantages in information management and donation tracking.