In 1964, The Control Data Corporation’s “CDC 6600” earned the illustrious title of “world’s fastest computer.” Three times faster than its closest competitor at the time (the “IBM 7030”), it performed up to 3 million instructions per second. It held onto that world-renowned recognition for four years, when it was surpassed by the company’s next-generation product, the “CDC 7600,” which could perform up to 30 million instructions per second.

Today, some 60 years later, high performance computing (HPC) capabilities process data and complex calculations at incredibly high speeds of quadrillions of calculations per second, a feat which mid-20th-century industry pioneers might never have imagined possible. HPC achieves these results with a technique called parallel processing, through which thousands of computers are networked together in a cluster that combines their power for greater speed and efficiency. Processing data at speeds measured in units called “floating-point operations per second,” or FLOPS, these super-computing systems also feature high-speed transportation of data between computer servers and ample storage to capture the output of all the data they manage.

The advent of high performance computing— which operates at speeds over a million times faster than the fastest commodity desktop, laptop, or server system in the market today— is enabling science, research, technology, business, artificial intelligence (AI), and society to advance in unprecedented ways.

Here are some of the many applications for high performance computing:

• Healthcare: Through activities such as molecular modeling and gene sequencing, high performance computing is used by medical researchers to predict how human cells will interact with specific drugs. This can improve diagnosis and treatment while also supporting the development of cures for diseases like cancer and diabetes. In one recent high-profile instance, HPC was effectively utilized by the medical community in conjunction with “The COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium” (comprised of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and IBM) during the pandemic to quickly investigate the way COVID-19 cells invade and replicate within the body, supporting the rapid development of antiviral drugs to combat it.
• Energy/Climate Research: Through the creation of models involving massive amounts of historical meteorological and climate data, high performance computing currently supports everything from the forecasting of earthquakes, hurricanes, and other storms to wind simulation, climate modeling, insights on the formation of stars, the location and optimization of new oil wells, identification of new sources of renewable energy, and more.
• Media: The entertainment industry uses high performance computing to edit feature films, create amazing special effects, and stream live events worldwide.
• Finance: Among other financial services, high performance computing helps track real-time stock trends, automate trading, provide fraud protection, and identify cyber threats.
• Manufacturing: High performance computing helps manufacturers build products faster and more cost-effectively. In the semiconductor industry, for example, manufacturers are using the strength of HPC to increase productivity on the factory floor. Additionally, auto and engine manufacturers are currently using HPC to develop more fuel-efficient engines that could reduce fuel costs by over US$1 billion annually.

Entering the “Exascale”

With the ongoing digitization of business and society and the expanding availability of faster mobile connections, 3D imaging, and AI tools, experts predict that high performance computing will be in greater demand than ever by businesses across the spectrum as a way to address some of the world’s biggest challenges in science, engineering, and business.

According to industry professional Susheel Tadikonda, Vice President of Engineering in the Systems Design Group at Synopsys, an electronic design automation company, the field of high performance computing will continue to evolve based on the need for enhanced speed, memory, storage, and cloud security “to efficiently manage massive data volumes and deliver high processing and analytical capabilities to various sectors.”

This is already happening through the development of “exascale” computing. The term “exa” means 18 zeroes – specifically, exascale computing can perform more than 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 floating-point operations per second (FLOPS), or 1 exaFLOPS. In May 2022, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Hewlett Packard Enterprise “Frontier” supercomputer officially became the world’s first and fastest exascale computer. It performed at a record 1.1 exaFLOPS, and experts believe it could evolve to perform at 2 exaFLOPS in the not-too-distant future.

Exploring the Future of High Performance Computing

Are you prepared for the Exascale Era and its capabilities?

Through High Performance Computing Technologies, Solutions to Exascale Systems, and Beyond, a five-course program from IEEE, learners will gain a better understanding of the history and evolution of HPC, from “big iron” computers decades ago to current and future exascale systems. Topics covered include the lessons history can teach about high performance computing, ways of accelerating application performance through hardware and software, the application of exascale computing to real-world problems, achievement of performance and efficiency in the HPC arena, and the use of AI and emerging technologies in science.

Connect with an IEEE Content Specialist today to learn how to get access to this program for your organization.

Interested in access for yourself? Visit the IEEE Learning Network (ILN).

Don’t Miss This Limited Time Special Offer!

In honor of IEEE Education Week, take advantage of this special offer on select eLearning courses— one of which is High Performance Computing: Use of AI and Emerging Technologies in Science— for US$10 each. Use the code ILNIEW24 at checkout on by 30 April 2024.

 

Resources

What is High-Performance Computing (HPC)? IBM.

BasuMallick, Chiradeep.  (1 December 2022).  What is a Supercomputer?  Features, Importance, and Examples. Spiceworks.

Zhang, Kevin. (15 December 2021). High-Performance Computing has Become Crucial to Competitive Advantage—in Every Industry. Fortune. 

Tadikonda, Susheel. Durrant, Scott. Knowlton, Scott. Molina, Ruben. (19 January 2022). Trends Driving the Future of High-Performance Computing (HPC). Embedded.

(22 November 2022). What is Exascale Computing? McKinsey & Company.

(4 February 2022). Researchers Tackle COVID-19 with AI. Caltech. 

Platts, Leon. (10 November 2023). How the Semiconductor Industry is Leveraging High-Performance Computing to Drive Innovation. IBM.

(14 March 2022). The COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium. National Institutes of Health.

What Is High Performance Computing? NetApp.

When many people hear the phrase “blockchain technology”, they immediately think of cryptocurrencies. However, blockchain is much more than cryptocurrencies. At its core, blockchain technology is a chain of records that store data and information. It is a tamper-proof and decentralized digital ledger, which provides full control to the user and eliminates governmental or third-party dominance. 

The global expenditure on blockchain solutions is anticipated to reach US$11.7 billion this year, and the number of individuals working in the blockchain sector has increased 76% as of June 2022. By 2024, it is anticipated that the worldwide blockchain technology market would generate US$20 billion in revenue. When blockchain technology is implemented correctly, it can solve problems in several sectors—with applications in the automotive, financial services, voting, and healthcare industries.

The Promise of Blockchain for Healthcare

Healthcare professionals and institutions are already capitalizing on blockchain technology by using early solutions to reduce costs, increasing the availability of authentic information, streamlining medical records, and providing secure and fast access to data. 

There are numerous applications of using blockchain in healthcare:

• Storage and Data Accessibility – Medical professionals can collaborate effectively, improving the opportunities and experiences for patients by using blockchain technology to access, store, and share data securely.
• Analysis and Data Collection – Using a data-driven, scalable, and patient-centric blockchain-based system will prove helpful in collecting sensitive data to train machine learning software. 
• Health Supply Chain Management – The blockchain provides practical solutions to streamline supply chain operations through less expensive, reliable, authentic, and easier methods.
• Drug Tracking – Blockchain technology provides a reliable way to ensure drug validity by providing the ability to trace every medicine back to its source.
• Remote Monitoring – Once uploaded to the blockchain, electronic medical records can be viewed and shared instantly and securely throughout the world. 

Protecting Sensitive Data

Hospital cyber security breaches hit an all-time high in 2021, with 45 million individuals affected by healthcare cyber attacks. The implications of these attacks can have a variety of consequences, ranging from the shutdown of hospital operations, diversion of non-emergency patients, a loss of confidentiality, exposure of patient data and information, and infrastructure damage.

Kali Durgampudi, the chief technology officer of healthcare payments company Zelis, believes that blockchain implementation is vital for protecting patients’ sensitive data from cyber criminals. He says that  because hackers cannot modify or copy the data, “blockchain technology vastly reduces security risks, giving hospital and healthcare IT organizations a much stronger line of defense against cyber criminals.”

Blockchain technology has the potential to alleviate many of these concerns. Any time the information is changed or shared, a new block is created to document the transaction. Strung together, these blocks create an impenetrable chain. Since the information cannot be modified or copied, blockchain technology vastly reduces security risks.

Challenges for Blockchain in Healthcare

Like most advances, there are limits to the promise of blockchain technology. Currently, blockchain’s scalability is low, with transaction speeds not up to the standard of being reliable for massive amounts of immediate transactions. Blockchain ecosystems can also require high energy consumption, making it expensive to manage over large amounts of data and networks. Finally, it is important to note that healthcare often lags behind other industries in adopting new and cutting-edge technologies. Regulations and infrastructure issues tend to prevent fast-paced growth in medical devices, newer drug development platforms, and adopting scalable technologies.

Blockchain Solutions for the Future

Get practical guidance for how to design a blockchain solution with the IEEE five-course program, A Step-by-Step Approach to Designing Blockchain Solutions. Developed by experts, this course program recaps the basics of the technology, the expected benefits of a blockchain solution, how a solution would benefit a prospect company, and more.

Contact an IEEE Account Specialist to learn more about how this program can benefit your organization.

Interested in getting access for yourself? Visit the IEEE Learning Network (ILN) today!

Resources

Durgampudi, Kali. (18 July 2022). The Potential of Blockchain Technology To Address Healthcare’s Biggest Challenges. Forbes.

Encila, Jet. (15 August 2022). Blockchain Industry Workforce Grows 80% This Year, Study Shows. Bitcoinist.

Garg, Amit & Shuang, Sharon. (16 August 2022). Blockchain & Healthcare- Where Are We? DateDrivenInvestor.

Hoffmann, Sofia. (9 August 2022). What Benefits Blockchain can Bring to Healthcare. HealthTECH Zone.

Linken, Scott. (12 August 2022). Making sense of bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain. PWC.

Quarmby, Brian. (22 July 2022). Blockchain’s use in healthcare ‘essential’ to protect sensitive data: Zelis CTO. Cointelegraph. 

Siwicki, Bill. (20 July 2022). Debunking some of healthcare’s biggest blockchain myths. HealthcareITNews. 

Technology has always presented numerous opportunities for improving and transforming healthcare. Such improvements include reducing human errors, improving clinical outcomes, facilitating care coordination, improving practice efficiencies, and tracking data over time. Machine learning (ML) has already proven effective at disease identification and prediction, recognizing patterns that are too subtle for the human eye to detect, guiding physicians towards better-targeted therapies and improved outcomes for patients. Researchers have also used ML as a tool to recognize signs of depression and suicidality by assessing patients’ voices, picking up changes in speech too subtle for a doctor to notice. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can expand our approach to mental health. 

Mapping Mental Health

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed an artificial intelligence model that generates ‘personalized maps’ to guide individuals toward improved mental well-being. In this study, the researchers developed a model based on deep learning, a type of machine learning that uses layered algorithmic architectures to analyze data. The researchers also identified the most depression-prone psychological configurations on the self-organizing maps, which they used to develop an algorithm to help individuals move away from potentially dangerous mental states. 

Shortest Path to Human Happiness

Deep Longevity, in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, offers another deep learning approach to mental health. Researchers have created two digital models of psychology that work together to find a path to happiness. 

The first model depicts the trajectories of the human mind as it ages. The second model is a self-organizing map that serves as the foundation for a recommendation engine for mental health applications. This learning algorithm splits all respondents into clusters depending on their likelihood of developing depression and determines the shortest path to mental stability for any individual. 

Combining Technology & Therapy is Key

Anyone with a smartphone can access conversational agent phone apps, also known as chatbots, which are meant to help users cope with the anxieties of daily life. These language processing systems can imitate human discussion by simulating conversations with a therapist via text. They can be a gateway to therapy or can reinforce lessons from in-person sessions. Research has shown that some people prefer interaction with chatbots rather than with real humans.

With the help of AI and machine learning, researchers are hoping the brain can help identify mental health issues. By applying specially designed algorithms to brain scans, labs could identify distinctive features that determine a patient’s optimal treatment. Machine learning could also assist in suicide-prevention. Currently, doctors only have a slight advantage over random probability in recognizing this risk. But algorithms, using data that are easily accessible to health care providers, can predict attempts with significantly improved accuracy.

Stay Current with Technology Advances

From healthcare to security, machine learning plays a critical role in developing the technology that will determine our future. Covering machine learning models, algorithms, and platforms, Machine Learning: Predictive Analysis for Business Decisions, is a five-course program from IEEE.

Connect with an IEEE Content Specialist today to learn more about this program and how to get access to it for your organization.

Interested in the program for yourself? Visit the IEEE Learning Network.

Resources

Deep Longevity LTD. (2 July 2022). Harvard Developed AI Identifies the Shortest Path to Human Happiness. SciTechDaily.

Gavrilova, Yulia. (4 July 2022). AI Chatbots & Mental Healthcare. IOT for All.

Glick, Molly. (1 July 2022). Your Next Therapist Could Be a Chatbot App. Discover.

Kennedy, Shania. (28 June 2022). AI-Generated ‘Maps’ May Help Improve Mental Well-being. Health IT Analytics. 

Kesari, Ganes. (24 May 2021). AI Can Now Detect Depression from Just Your Voice. Forbes. 

Rutherford, Lucie. (18 February 2022). Medicine Meets Big Data: Clinicians Look to AI For Disease Prediction and Prevention. UVAToday.

Savage, Neil. (25 March 2020). How AI is improving cancer diagnostics. Nature.

Most of us can only dream of playing professional sports. However, augmented reality (AR) could soon turn these dreams into reality — that is, a virtual one.

This fall, the National Football League (NFL) will release its first officially licensed game for virtual reality platforms, ESPN reported. The “NFL PRO ERA” game will give players the ability to experience — in virtual reality — what it is like to play pro football. Using a special AR headset, players will be able to experience the game on a virtual field. 

The game, which will be available on Meta Quest and PlayStation VR, and licensed by the NFL Players Association, will turn NFL fans into virtual NFL quarterbacks, giving them the ability to try to make plays they have seen real-life NFL quarterbacks make on television. 

“When we think about this experience, you’re finally immersing yourself as the professional athlete for the first time ever and seeing it in a way that you’ve never seen it,” Troy Jones, co-founder of StatusPRO, the company that is developing the game, told ESPN. “It is the future, and we look at it as the new era of gaming and the next step in the way people will consume sports.”

How AR Gaming Will Improve Cognitive and Mental Health

The impact of AR gaming will be felt beyond entertainment. According to CNET, one area where it is already having an impact is on exergaming, a type of gaming that incorporates physical movement. Exergaming has been around for a while — with well-known brands like DanceDance Revolution, which made its debut in 1999. Researchers are looking into how to take the technology a step further by combining it with AR. 

For example, the Pacific Brain Health Center’s “FitBrain” program aims to boost the mental function of seniors by merging cognitive exercises and physical exercise through stationary bikes and treadmills combined with 2D tablets or 3D VR headsets.

“Physical exercise is probably one if not the most well-validated interventions to improve both general health and also brain health or brain function or both,” Dr. David A. Merrill, an adult and geriatric psychiatrist and director of the Brain Health Center, told CNET.

Technological Advancements in AR Will Create a More Realistic, Immersive Experience

While AR has been around since the 1990s, the technology has become much more advanced in recent years. Improvements include features that allow players to better interact with the virtual environment. According to CNN Business, researchers at Salzburg University developed an AR mask that players can breathe into, allowing them to blow out candles, blow up balloons, and more in a virtual world. Meanwhile, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University equipped an Oculus Quest 2 headset with ultrasonic transducers that produce ultrasonic energy, which points at a wearer’s mouth in order to generate unique sensations, such as the feeling of wind on your lips, PC Gamer reported. 

These AR advancements are only the beginning. With the rollout of 5G networks across the world – a development that will allow for faster internet speeds and the transferring of enormous amounts of data necessary to support advanced AR gaming – it is only a matter of time before AR gaming becomes widespread. 

Practical Applications of Virtual and Augmented Reality in Business and Society

One aspect of video gaming that makes it unique is that it has always been driven by the desire for maximum fun, not the need to solve a specific real-world problem. This has driven both the development and commercialization of new technologies.

Enroll in Practical Applications of Virtual and Augmented Reality in Business and Society: The Case of Gaming on the IEEE Learning Network to discover the impact of video games as a $160 billion USD industry on the evolution of real world intelligent and immersive realities. 

In this online course, we’ll review the history and relevance of gaming, explore what makes gaming unique, show how gaming has impacted the development of multiple technologies that are fundamental to immersive reality, discuss unexpected use cases, and more!

Resources

Rice, Andrea. (17 May 2022). VR Exercise Games Could Offer Hope for Delaying Dementia. CNET.

Corrigan, Hope. (9 May 2022). Scientists add mouth haptics to VR, complete with spiders. PC Gamer.

Rothstein, Michael. (20 April 2022). NFL-licensed virtual reality game set for fall release. ESPN.

This mask makes breathing in virtual reality more realistic. CNN Business. 

Cloud technology is entering the era of the multi-cloud. When using multiple clouds supported by various cloud providers, organizations can reap the best features of each, thereby making their cloud infrastructure far more flexible.

During his opening keynote at Dell Technologies World Conference in May, CEO Michael Dell expressed his views on multi-clouds as the future of cloud technology. According to Dell, multi-cloud ecosystems will harness the combined power of edge computing with artificial intelligence (AI) to “process and deliver data across 5G networks in highly automated environments.” 

Multi-cloud technology is already expanding rapidly. According to Dell, 90 percent of his company’s customers currently have both on-premise and public cloud environments, while 75 percent are using three to four different clouds. However, he also noted that multi-cloud technology is creating larger amounts of data and security challenges in the process.

“Anything you want to do in today’s world, from [decentralized finance] to blockchain to metaverse, and autonomous vehicles, and robotics, smart everythings, based exploration, AI, disaster recovery, AR/VR — all these things consume and create tremendous amounts of distributed data and distributed computing power,” he said. “And because workloads follow data, the distributed future will be much bigger than you can imagine, and so will the attack surface. Ransomware attacks are the No. 1 threat for most organizations, and are occurring every 11 seconds, with an average cost of $13 million per occurrence.”

Despite some challenges, multi-cloud technology holds huge promises for organizations. When paired with hybrid cloud, in which an organization splits its data between a cloud and an on-premise datacenter, multi-cloud infrastructure can create a truly decentralized cloud platform. This allows an organization to not depend on any singular data center or provider. According to Entrepreneur, this approach allows organizations to customize their technological environment to their specific needs.

How Cloud Technology Is Already Advancing Health Care

One industry that is already gaining benefits from cloud technology is health care. According to Forbes, these benefits include expanding access to telehealth, which has already begun under the COVID-19 pandemic. Telehealth is working to make it possible for more people in both rural and urban areas to access physicians. 

Other benefits include faster drug testing and manufacturing. For example, vaccine maker Moderna was able to speed approval for its COVID-19 vaccines with support from cloud computing through Amazon Web Services. By using cloud computing, the company was able to build a technology to rapidly test vaccines. 

“Moderna runs its Drug Design Studio on AWS’s highly scalable compute and storage infrastructure to quickly design mRNA sequences for protein targets. It then uses analytics and machine learning to optimize those sequences for production so that the company’s automated manufacturing platform can successfully convert them into physical mRNA for testing,” state Moderna and AWS.

Understanding Challenges of the Cloud

Organizations are only beginning to realize the benefits of cloud computing. However, before they adopt the cloud, they must first understand the challenges that come with embracing this rapidly advancing technology.

To learn more about the benefits and challenges of cloud computing and how it pertains to your organization, check out Cloud Computing on the IEEE Learning Network. This online course program includes 25 self-paced courses focused on various aspects of cloud computing technologies.

Interested in getting access for your organization? Contact an IEEE Content Specialist for more details.

Resource

Kuehne, Joe. (9 May 2022). Dell Tech World: Michael Dell Proclaims That the Future Is Multicloud. BizTech.

Montoya, Sergio Ramos. (10 May 2022). This is how cloud computing advances, a valuable resource for companies. Entrepreneur.

Schnitfink, Theo. (10 May 2022). How Technology Puts The ‘Care’ In Healthcare: The Role Of The Cloud During The Pandemic. Forbes.

Press Release. AWS Powers Moderna’s Digital Biotechnology Platform to Develop New Class of Vaccines and Therapeutics. Businesswire.

Blockchain technology will not only revolutionize medical records, it will also create a patient-centric healthcare industry dramatically different from what exists today. As discussed in previous posts, blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger of transactions that records data in a way that prevents hacking and altering of data by duplicating transactions and dispersing them to “nodes” across the network. 

“Blockchain possess the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry by placing the patient at the center of the ecosystem, amplifying interoperability, privacy, and security of health data,” write Vic Gupta and Harish Nanda, the Executive Vice President of Digital & AI and Chief Architect of Coforge, in ET Healthworld.com. “The technology is set to equip [the] healthcare industry with a more advanced Health Information Exchange (HIE) model that could genuinely transform electronic medical records, making them significantly more secure, efficient, and disintermediated.” 

However, the healthcare industry has been slow to adopt blockchain due to the sensitivity of the data handled. 

Healthcare Blockchain Relies on Hybrid Technology Stacks

Because the healthcare industry needs to protect highly sensitive patient data, its blockchain technology must rely on a hybrid technology stack, rather than a system in which data is delivered across blockchain nodes, according to Stuart Hanson, CEO of Avaneer Health.

“Instead, this technology can be used to help index the complex industry sources of data across a network and make this data more fluid and, therefore, valuable,” he told Healthcare IT News. “In other words, we need to figure out a delicate balance between blockchain and other technology components within the stack in order to preserve the key value added from blockchain while making the entire system robust and optimized for the healthcare use cases.”

How Multiple-Signature Contracts Will Provide Solutions to the Healthcare Blockchain

According to Xudong Huang, a researcher at Harvard Medical School who was interviewed by Managed Healthcare Executive, healthcare blockchain is valuable to patients because it simultaneously provides them with data security and data ownership, compared to traditional data management and security systems, which he discussed in a 2019 paper. 

Blockchain-based systems would require patients to authorize retrieval of their data through what Huang and coauthors call multiple-signature, or “multisig,” contracts in healthcare blockchains. Using these signatures, both the patient and healthcare provider use separate private keys to access the patient’s medical record in the network. While this means the provider can’t access the patient’s data without permission, it also means that only providers—not patients—can change the patient’s data.

While silioing data in such a way can create obstacles for big data analytics, which researchers and healthcare companies often rely on to create solutions in the healthcare industry, Huang thinks it may actually help. 

“An easy solution for this is any de-identified patients’ data can be released to a public database for easy access,” he told the publication. In other words, blockchain would allow wider, simplified access of data among vetted parties on the blockchain.

As the blockchain brings major solutions to healthcare, the industry will need to learn to adjust to a new, patient-centric network. Other industries will find themselves in a similar position. Has your organization prepared to adopt blockchain technology? 

Designing Blockchain Solutions

Get practical guidance for how to design a blockchain solution with the IEEE five-course program, A Step-by-Step Approach to Designing Blockchain Solutions. Developed by experts, this course program recaps the basics of the technology; the expected benefits of a blockchain solution; how a solution would benefit a prospect company; and more.

Contact an IEEE Account Specialist to learn more about how this program can benefit your organization.

Interested in getting access for yourself? Visit the IEEE Learning Network (ILN) today!

Resources

Gupta, Vic and Nanda, Harish. (24 March 2022). Blockchain Disrupting the Healthcare Ecosystem. ET HealthWorld.com.

Siwicki, Bill. (3 March 2022). Healthcare blockchain leader talks challenges and trends in DLT. Healthcare IT News.

Kaltwasser, Jared. (8 February 2022). Is Healthcare Ready For Blockchain? Managed Healthcare Executive.

From patient-centric hospital networks to higher quality medicine, blockchain technology is revolutionizing healthcare in a number of ways. As discussed in previous posts, blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger of transactions that records data in a way that prevents hacking and altering of data by duplicating transactions and dispersing them to “nodes” across the network. 

According to Jose Morey, Chief Executive Officer of Ad Astra Media and Chief Health Officer of Ever Medical Technologies, the secure and transparent nature of blockchain means that it has a number of potential applications in the medical industry.  Writing in Forbes, he notes a number of ways that blockchain is already transforming healthcare.

Blockchain Applications That Could Revolutionize Healthcare

Blockchain will allow the medical industry to share and access patient data securely:  The technology will “facilitate finely customizable openness while upholding only the best security standards for true interoperability,” Morey writes. This will allow health information systems to “work together within and across organizational boundaries” to enhance healthcare delivery. Chronicled is one company that is already using blockchain to secure patient data.

Blockchain will improve contract negotiations: In the healthcare industry, contract negotiations often get quite complex, which can take up a lot of time as a result. Blockchain, however, is already providing a solution. A company called Curisium uses the technology “to create a platform for rebate negotiation and contract management,” Morey writes. He adds that the platform streamlines traditional processes by allowing “providers and payers to take part in innovative contracting arrangements.”

Blockchain can foster innovation and connect large hospital networks: For example, a company called Ever integrated a “blockchain, data-driven, patient-centric network” within Thailand’s medical system. The technology connected more than 170 hospitals and 5 million patients. “It enables best-in-class security for all connected data and parties while maintaining close and easy communication with trusted parties— all on a flexible, future-proof, scalable blockchain foundation,” Morey says. 

Blockchain allows organizations to create both secure and transparent networks: With blockchain technology, hospitals can quickly and easily share patient data in a way that is fully secure. “Protected by state-of-the-art security solutions, attackers would require vast computational capabilities to even attempt targeting a blockchain-powered network, severely limiting the frequency, possibility and effectiveness of attacks,” states Morey. One company utilizing blockchain in this way is Patientory, which develops “patient-centric applications” that provide up-to-date patient histories and data, pandemic tracking and reporting, and secure communication with verified healthcare personnel.

Furthermore, blockchain has the potential to greatly improve the quality of medicine. According to Pharmacy Times, OCEASOFT, a company that makes atmospheric monitors for supply chains, and Chronicled, an Internet of Things- and blockchain-focused supply chain technology business, are working together to implement blockchain for atmospheric monitoring in the drug supply chain. These monitors glean information such as CO2, temperature, and humidity, which is stored in a decentralized ledger. Buyers and sellers can use this secure ledger to monitor the quality of drugs across global supply chains. Such a system would also help prevent fraud and the purchase of expired drugs.  

These blockchain transformations are only the beginning. It’s only a matter of time before more industries are harnessing this revolutionary technology. 

Preparing Your Industry for Blockchain Technology

In addition to the healthcare industry, many fields can benefit from distributed ledger technology. Check out Enterprise Blockchain for Healthcare, IoT, Energy, and Supply Chain to learn about highly anticipated use cases.

Developed by leading experts in blockchain technology, this five-course program is ideal for managers, professional engineers, and business leaders.

Contact an IEEE Content Specialist to learn more about how this program can benefit your organization.

Interested in getting access for yourself? Visit the IEEE Learning Network (ILN) today!

Resources

Kenney, Skylar. (28 October 2021). The Case for Leveraging Blockchain to Improve the Global Health Supply Chain. Pharmacy Times. 

Morey, Jose. (25 October 2021). The Future Of Blockchain In Healthcare. Forbes.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the power to connect all devices through a cloud-based ecosystem. In the future, it could potentially undergird the infrastructure of smart cities in order to make communications far more streamlined and efficient than they are today. However, a major obstacle for IoT is that it still depends largely on centralized platforms. This can make sensitive data vulnerable to hackers.

Blockchain technology has the potential to fix this problem. As discussed in a previous post, blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger of transactions that records data in a way that prevents hacking and altering of the data. It does this by duplicating transactions and dispersing them to “nodes” across the network.

Blockchain would allow contracts known as “smart contracts” to be completed autonomously in a decentralized manner, creating a web of connected devices that gives users control over their own data.

Unfortunately, there are obstacles preventing a full merger between blockchain and IoT. Currently, all IoT devices that “talk” to each other must be on the same blockchain. Similar to how the internet runs on a vast web of servers, a future IoT will need to rely on a network of blockchains. As such, scalability is a major obstacle to merging IoT and blockchain, as current blockchains have yet to reach this level of maturity.

While there are obstacles, the integration of blockchain and IoT would be revolutionary. It would create a record of every transaction made on the IoT, which cannot be altered, making data far more secure. Additionally, it would streamline the entire supply chain—from manufacturing lines to consumers—giving every stakeholder access to documentation when required. Furthermore, a fully integrated blockchain and IoT will make industries that rely on one another, such as insurance companies and supply chain logistics, interconnected and seamless.

How IoT and Blockchain Can Revolutionize Healthcare and Finance

COVID-19 has created a logistical nightmare for both vaccine distributors and health care workers worldwide. Two of the most common vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, must be kept at below zero degree temperatures or they will degrade. This vaccine challenge is a primary example of how blockchain and IoT can work in tandem to streamline operations and enhance distribution.

As discussed in a previous post, vaccine manufacturers can place IoT sensors on vaccine packaging or even on individual vials which allow distributors to track and monitor their location and temperature during delivery, and quickly spot and fix problems as they arise. When the vials arrive at vaccination centers, health care workers can scan the packages to get immediate access to important information about the quality of vaccines.

Blockchain and IoT also have the power to revolutionize finance through smart payments. For example, JPMorgan Chase & Co recently piloted blockchain payments between satellites orbiting Earth. As an experiment, the bank worked with a nanosatellite supplier called GOMspace, which gave them the ability to run software on their satellites. The test revealed that blockchain networks can fuel transactions between devices, and that it’s possible to build a marketplace where satellites send data to one another in exchange for money. Such a system, for example, could allow a smart refrigerator connected to the IoT to order food from an e-commerce site when it runs low and give an autonomous vehicle the ability to buy gas.

While obstacles for blockchain and IoT remain, a merger between the two has the potential to radically impact our world.

Understand Enterprise Blockchain for Your Industry

What other industries can benefit from blockchain technology? Get Enterprise Blockchain for Healthcare, IoT, Energy, and Supply Chain, a five-course program from IEEE, to find out. Developed by leading experts in blockchain technology, this advanced program provides business use cases across key industries and sectors. It’s ideal for managers, professional engineers, as well as business leaders.

Contact an IEEE Content Specialist to learn more about how this program can benefit your organization.

Interested in getting access for yourself? Visit the IEEE Learning Network (ILN) today!

Resources

Chai, Raullen. (7 May 2021). Internet of Trusted Things: Democratizing IoT. IoT for All. 

(24 March 2021). The Future of the Internet Of Things with Blockchain. Manufacturing Business Technology. 

Kavinsky, Marc. (10 March 2021). How Are Blockchain And IoT Helping COVID Vaccine Shipments? IoT Business News 

Irrera, Anna. (24 February 2021). JPMorgan’s blockchain payments test is literally out of this world. Reuters. 

When it comes to designing ethical artificial intelligence (AI) systems, developers usually have the best intentions. However, problems often occur when developers fail to follow their intentions, what’s dubbed the “intention-action gap.”

To avoid this, a new report from the World Economic Forum and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, titled “Responsible Use of Technology: The Microsoft Case Study,” recommends developers follow the lessons listed below.

AI Standards Lessons

1. Before you can innovate responsibly, you must transform your organization’s culture:
   To innovate ethically, you need a company culture that encourages introspection and learning from mistakes. For example, by adopting what Microsoft calls a “hub-and-spoke” cultural model across the various departments that influence product development, Microsoft ensures that security, privacy, and accessibility are embedded into all of its products. This “hub” consists of a trio of internal groups that work like “spokes” within its governance: The AI, Ethics, and Effects in Engineering and Research (AETHER) Committee; The Office of Responsible AI (ORA); and the Responsible AI Strategy in Engineering (RAISE) group. Additionally, Microsoft launched the Responsible AI Standard, a series of steps that internal teams have to follow to support the creation of responsible AI systems.
2. Use tools and methods that make ethics implementation simple:
   With the right technical tools, it will be easier to integrate your new ethics model into the many facets of your organization. Microsoft uses several technical tools—Fairlearn, InterpretML, and Error Analysis—to implement ethics. For example, Fairlearn allows data scientists to analyze and enhance the fairness of machine learning models. Each platform offers dashboards that make it easier for workers to visualize performance. By using checklists, role-playing exercises, and stakeholder engagement, these tools also help teams understand the possible consequences of their products. It also fosters more compassion for how underrepresented stakeholders might be affected.
3. Create employee accountability by measuring impact:
   Make sure your employees are aligned with your company’s ethical values by evaluating their performance against your ethics principles. To do this, Microsoft team members meet with managers for bi-yearly performance evaluations and goal settings to establish personal goals in line with those of the company.
4. Inclusive products are superior products:
   By innovating responsibly through the lifecycle of a product, companies will make products that are better and more inclusive. They can do this by creating principles for AI toolkits that set expectations from the outset of product development.

New Healthcare Industry AI Standard Considers Three Areas of Trust

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), a working group of 64 organizations, recently created a new standard that identifies the basic requirements for establishing reliable AI solutions. Healthcare organizations involved in the project include AdvaMed, America’s Health Insurance Plans, Ginger, Philips, 98point6, and ResMed.

The standard, released in February 2021 and accredited by the American National Standards Institute, considers three ways to create trustworthy and sustainable AI healthcare solutions:

• Human trust: Consider the way humans interact and how they will interpret the AI solution.
• Technical trust: Address data use, such as data access, privacy, quality, integrity, and issues around bias. Additionally, technical trust considers the technical execution and training of an AI design to provide predictable results.
• Regulatory trust: Ensure compliance to regulatory agencies, federal and state laws, accreditation boards, and global standardization frameworks.

Developing standards for AI applications is difficult, but necessary. By having a plan that integrates ethics throughout your organization, you can better ensure your AI systems are reliable and safe.

Establishing AI Standards for Your Organization

Artificial intelligence continues to spread across various industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and finance among others. It’s vital to keep in mind rigorous ethical standards designed to protect the end-user when leveraging these new digital environments. AI Standards: Roadmap for Ethical and Responsible Digital Environments, is a new five-course program from IEEE that provides instructions for a comprehensive approach to creating ethical and responsible digital ecosystems.

Contact an IEEE Content Specialist to learn more about how this program can benefit your organization.

Interested in getting access for yourself? Visit the IEEE Learning Network (ILN) today!

Resources

Green, Brian and Lim, Daniel. (25 February 2021). 4 lessons on designing responsible, ethical tech: Microsoft case study. World Economic Forum.

Landi, Heather. (18 February 2021). AHIP, tech companies create new healthcare AI standard as industry aims to provide more guardrails. Fierce Healthcare.

With news that vaccines to control the spread of COVID-19 have been developed and approved, the next step will be the enormous undertaking of administering them to the public. For the current vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech to be long-lasting and effective, individuals must take two separate doses three to four weeks apart (the length of time depends on which vaccine is used)—bringing the total to about 15 billion doses. 

“[It’s] a level of undertaking that is just beyond anything we have done as a society,” Mark Treshock, Blockchain Solutions Leader for Healthcare and Life Sciences at IBM, told mobihealthnews. “To confound that, it’s the fact that these vaccines are all different, and they are not interchangeable. So even though they treat or vaccinate against the same virus, they are different vaccines.”

Blockchain technology, a decentralized digital ledger of transactions that records data in a way that prevents hacking and data altercation, may be able to help medical professionals, manufacturers, distributors, and patients stay on top of these vaccines in a secure manner. Not only can blockchain be used to track vaccines over long distances in order to ensure they are temperature controlled and safe for use upon delivery, it can also help medical professionals and patients maintain vaccination records. This could help patients as they may need to prove to authorities that they are safe to travel or to verify that they can be in an indoor office environment. Blockchain can also be used to solidify immunization records about a patient. This process can ensure a patient is receiving the correct pair of COVID-19 vaccines, which they may also need for verification purposes.

“The two-dose challenge,” said Treshock. “Where you need two doses, they need to be within a set time window, let’s say 30 days, and they need to be from the same manufacturer. So, if your first dose is Pfizer, your second dose has to be Pfizer as well. They aren’t interchangeable. When we start administering this vaccine at scale, it is going to be very challenging coordinating that.”

How Can Blockchain Help Manage Health Data?

Blockchain has the power to transform the healthcare industry. Whereas much of our online data is currently in the hands of private companies like Facebook, blockchain can give individuals control over their personal data. Data collected on the Internet is a kind of virtual representation of every user. However, many individuals have no real ownership over their data, which can create problems when it comes to security, access, monetization, privacy, and advocacy.  

“That identity is now yours, but the data that comes from its interaction in the world is owned by someone else,” Carlos Moreira, CEO of WISeKey, told Harvard Business Review. 

Not only is blockchain decentralized, it’s also immutable. This means transactions cannot be changed or undone without approval. Blockchain keeps digital identity safe in a “digital wallet” that gathers and protects all the data, which can include health information. For example, this “digital wallet” could house personal health records or health information captured by a smart watch, and then give an individual control over how that data is used. 

Some organizations are already using blockchain to successfully manage health data, including:

• Canada’s University Health Network (UHN) created a patient control-and-consent platform designed to make clinical research easier. Created in partnership with IBM, UHN uses blockchain to amass and secure patient data throughout the network. It receives and records consent from each patient in order for their data to be shared with researchers.
• MiPasa, an initiative founded by the start-up Hacera, is a platform designed to capture pandemic data on an international scale from the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, licensed private facilities, local public health agencies, and individuals—without identifying them. The platform aggregates data through Hacera’s Unbounded Network, a decentralized blockchain supported by Hyperledger Fabric. It then uses IBM’s blockchain and cloud platforms to stream the data.
• The blockchain startup Shivom is developing an international project that gathers and shares virus host data. The platform uses blockchain to actively maintain patient consent, and to securely and privately share genomic information and data analysis with third parties without offering access to patients’ raw genomic data.

Blockchain has the potential to revolutionize health care, but requires a transformation in the rules for defining and assigning data ownership. 

Understand Enterprise Blockchain for Your Industry

What other industries can benefit from blockchain technology? Get Enterprise Blockchain for Healthcare, IoT, Energy, and Supply Chain, a five-course program from IEEE, to find out. Developed by leading experts in blockchain technology, this advanced program provides business use cases across key industries and sectors. It’s ideal for managers, professional engineers, and business leaders.

Contact an IEEE Content Specialist to learn more about how this program can benefit your organization.

Interested in getting access for yourself? Visit the IEEE Learning Network (ILN) today!

Resources

Goodnough, Abby. Zimmer, Carl. Robbins, Rebecca. Mandavilli, Apoorva. Thomas, Denise Grady Katie. Parker-Pope, Tara. Weiland, Noah. Singer, Natasha, Leonhardt., David, Rabin. Roni Caryn. Bosman, Julie. Abelson, Reed. Pérez-Peña, Richard. (14 December 2020). Answers to Your Questions About the New Covid Vaccines in the U.S. New York Times.

Lovett, Laura. (25 November 2020). Blockchain could be the key to vaccine distribution, says IBM. mobihealthnews.

Tapscott, Don and Tapscott, Alex. (12 June 2020). What Blockchain Could Mean for Your Health Data. Harvard Business Review.