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Blockchain for Electronic Vaccine Certificates: More Cons Than Pros?
Electronic vaccine certificates (EVC) for COVID-19 vaccination are likely to become widespread. Blockchain (BC) is an electronic immutable distributed ledger and is one of the more common proposed EVC platform options. However, the principles of blockchain are not widely understood by public health...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9304987/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35875593 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2022.833196 |
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author | Toubiana, Raphaëlle Macdonald, Millie Rajananda, Sivananda Lokvenec, Tale Kingsley, Thomas C. Romero-Brufau, Santiago |
author_facet | Toubiana, Raphaëlle Macdonald, Millie Rajananda, Sivananda Lokvenec, Tale Kingsley, Thomas C. Romero-Brufau, Santiago |
author_sort | Toubiana, Raphaëlle |
collection | PubMed |
description | Electronic vaccine certificates (EVC) for COVID-19 vaccination are likely to become widespread. Blockchain (BC) is an electronic immutable distributed ledger and is one of the more common proposed EVC platform options. However, the principles of blockchain are not widely understood by public health and medical professionals. We attempt to describe, in an accessible style, how BC works and the potential benefits and drawbacks in its use for EVCs. Our assessment is BC technology is not well suited to be used for EVCs. Overall, blockchain technology is based on two key principles: the use of cryptography, and a distributed immutable ledger in the format of blockchains. While the use of cryptography can provide ease of sharing vaccination records while maintaining privacy, EVCs require some amount of contribution from a centralized authority to confirm vaccine status; this is partly because these authorities are responsible for the distribution and often the administration of the vaccine. Having the data distributed makes the role of a centralized authority less effective. We concluded there are alternative ways to use cryptography outside of a BC that allow a centralized authority to better participate, which seems necessary for an EVC platform to be of practical use. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9304987 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93049872022-07-23 Blockchain for Electronic Vaccine Certificates: More Cons Than Pros? Toubiana, Raphaëlle Macdonald, Millie Rajananda, Sivananda Lokvenec, Tale Kingsley, Thomas C. Romero-Brufau, Santiago Front Big Data Big Data Electronic vaccine certificates (EVC) for COVID-19 vaccination are likely to become widespread. Blockchain (BC) is an electronic immutable distributed ledger and is one of the more common proposed EVC platform options. However, the principles of blockchain are not widely understood by public health and medical professionals. We attempt to describe, in an accessible style, how BC works and the potential benefits and drawbacks in its use for EVCs. Our assessment is BC technology is not well suited to be used for EVCs. Overall, blockchain technology is based on two key principles: the use of cryptography, and a distributed immutable ledger in the format of blockchains. While the use of cryptography can provide ease of sharing vaccination records while maintaining privacy, EVCs require some amount of contribution from a centralized authority to confirm vaccine status; this is partly because these authorities are responsible for the distribution and often the administration of the vaccine. Having the data distributed makes the role of a centralized authority less effective. We concluded there are alternative ways to use cryptography outside of a BC that allow a centralized authority to better participate, which seems necessary for an EVC platform to be of practical use. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-07-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9304987/ /pubmed/35875593 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2022.833196 Text en Copyright © 2022 Toubiana, Macdonald, Rajananda, Lokvenec, Kingsley and Romero-Brufau. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Big Data Toubiana, Raphaëlle Macdonald, Millie Rajananda, Sivananda Lokvenec, Tale Kingsley, Thomas C. Romero-Brufau, Santiago Blockchain for Electronic Vaccine Certificates: More Cons Than Pros? |
title | Blockchain for Electronic Vaccine Certificates: More Cons Than Pros? |
title_full | Blockchain for Electronic Vaccine Certificates: More Cons Than Pros? |
title_fullStr | Blockchain for Electronic Vaccine Certificates: More Cons Than Pros? |
title_full_unstemmed | Blockchain for Electronic Vaccine Certificates: More Cons Than Pros? |
title_short | Blockchain for Electronic Vaccine Certificates: More Cons Than Pros? |
title_sort | blockchain for electronic vaccine certificates: more cons than pros? |
topic | Big Data |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9304987/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35875593 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2022.833196 |
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