How Blockchain is saving lives 6 months into the war in Ukraine
SAN FRANCISCO, 24 August 2022 It has been almost 6 months since Yulia and her two children fled Kyiv in the middle of the night to the backdrop of bomb sirens wailing in the background. With nothing more than a suitcase containing the essentials for her young family, Yulia made the 550 km journey to Chelm, a city in Lublin province in the southeast. Poland. Upon arrival Poland, Yulia fell ill and was diagnosed with strep throat. She saw a doctor and was immediately prescribed penicillin. Soon after, Yulia began to suffer from a life-threatening allergy to the medication and was hospitalized for 4 days. Due to the inability to access Yulia’s medical records, the prescribing physician was unaware of her allergy to penicillin, a mistake that could have cost her her life.
Yulia’s story is hardly unique. Since the start of the war, more than 5 million people have fled Ukraine. Due to the ongoing conflict, many cannot access medical records, leading to reduced quality of care and increased risk of preventable complications. To combat this, TransCrypts, a Silicon Valley-based document verification platform, launched a blockchain-based medical records service to make these records portable for fleeing Ukrainians. Ukrainians seeking treatment abroad are now able to share their confirmed medical history via a QR code and can translate it into the local language of the host country. Through the TransCrypts platform, doctors can access a patient’s complete medical record and can also see the healthcare professional responsible for creating the respective document. By connecting everything in the chain, the validity of the documents is maintained and through AES encryption, the documents are kept private and secure against unauthorized access. In the five months since the deployment of the pilot, TransCrypts has partnered with various grassroots organizations throughout Europe and has helped over 500 refugees relocate their medical records Ukraine.
“After almost 5 months on the ground, we are seeing an increase of almost 37% in the quality of care for patients with TransCrypts’ records,” says TransCrypts CEO Zain Zaidi. “We are saving lives and we hope to expand our pilot to cover more patients through direct collaboration with local authorities and voluntary organisations”.
As the benefits of the pilot become clear, TransCrypts hopes to partner with more organizations to continue serving refugee communities in war-torn regions of the world.
About TransCrypts
TransCrypts redesigns digital documentation to empower consumers to own and share their verified documents. TransCrypts offers an API-enabled platform that connects to existing databases. Using the information on these databases, it issues blockchain-backed credentials to the individuals in those organizations who can then share that information with requesting third parties. Using TransCrypts creates a better experience for individuals in these organizations, while removing the responsibility of responding to verification requests from the organization, saving them time and compliance-related costs. To learn more, visit www.transcrypts.com.
Media contact:
Ali Zaheer
[email protected]
SOURCE TransCrypts
