Areiel Wolanow is the CTO of Blok BioScience and Managing Director of Finserv Experts. In this podcast we get to learn about the exciting work Areiel and his team are doing in developing end to end solutions against COVID-19. You’ll hear insights about how they developed a self-sovereign “immunity passport”, population testing protocols, supply chain capabilities, and a sophisticated analytical and insights dashboard for governments and enterprises to better appreciate and combat this pandemic. You’ll also hear about the conundrum on how to work with contact and trace applications in a manner that protects the principles of self-sovereignty.

 

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is a technology that allows multiple companies or people to share a single version of the truth without having to spend any time, effort or money on reconciliation, messaging and synchronization to name a few. The benefit from sharing allows the opportunity for completely new business models and new ways of solving problems to arise.

Areiel, previously featured on Insureblocks to talk to us about “Unlocking investment in blockchain projects”. What has changed in his view regarding blockchain is a very welcome maturation of thought. It is a toolkit for solving problems and for accomplishing what previously what would have taken large numbers of people, or expensive software solutions can now be taken for granted.

 

What is Blok BioScience?

Blok BioScience is a team of thought leaders in the medical, technology and supply chain industry who’ve grouped together to develop rapid solutions that deliver the best possible medical diagnostic and supply chain capability to fight the unprecedented impact COVID-19 is having on the world. Areiel’s Finserv Experts have entered into a business partnership with Blok to provide technology delivery capability.

 

Addressing the COVID-19 Ecosystem

The scientific community does not use words like immunity or protection lightly or without a great deal of consideration. When somebody says this vaccine confers immunity to this disease, they are encapsulating and summarizing, in most cases years of scientific study before they're willing to make that claim. When the WHO (World Health Organisation) recently came out and said we're not sure that the IgG (Immunoglobulin G) antibody is a marker of immunity, all that they’re saying is that they have not subjected that claim to a level of scientific rigor that would allow them to say yes, the IgG antibody confers immunity.

As the world’s economy has come to a standstill the world is demanding answers of the scientific community far faster than they are normally required to give those answers. And that results in a great deal of uncertainty.

Providing an answer needs to address all of these questions in a holistic way and provide not only say a test capability or a set of scientific studies, or a technical platform, but a holistic end to end solution that encapsulates all of that. And that's really the ambition that Blok was set up to tackle.

 

Immunity passports

The WHO issued a warning about immunity passports:

“