Blockchain‘s immutable and tamper-resistant public ledger fosters customer confidence in the system, allowing its technology to be incorporated into high-stakes environments, including multibillion-dollar private enterprises and the public sector.
With the element of trust as a baseline, blockchain is finding its way into the networks of many countries worldwide, with most dabbling with proofs of concept and a few, particularly in the Middle East, progressing even further.
The Middle East: A Forerunner in Developing Emerging Technologies
The Middle East is a forerunner in the public sector usage of emerging technologies, of which blockchain is the foundation. At present, most governments in the region are currently using the technology in some capacity. The Middle East also has a more streamlined top-to-bottom governance, so once the top decides to implement blockchain, all agencies below it will quickly follow suit.
The BSV Blockchain for Government Initiative Middle East Lead Ahmed Yousif shared at the CoinGeek Conference New York that governments have been dissatisfied with processing massive data volumes for the last 20 to 30 years, and blockchain has the biggest potential to address this issue.
Yousif says Saudi Arabia’s government is experimenting with its technology beyond finance use cases to remodel its identity management process in an era where online record keeping, including health and vaccination information, has become crucial.
Blockchain Solutions
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) government targets having 50% of its transactions on-chain by 2030. In particular, there is a high demand for expanded partnerships with the BSV Blockchain, the largest public blockchain that is capable of limitless scaling.
This enables it to accommodate increasing data blocks and volume of transactions, while continuously reducing transaction fees to tiny fractions of a cent. With its extensive data functionalities and unbounded scalability, BSV is well positioned to supply blockchain solutions suitable for both the private and public sectors.
In response to this demand, London-based firm Dominium Blockchain Solutions has partnered with the BSV Blockchain Association in order to begin exploring potential avenues for cooperation with Middle Eastern businesses that are seeing substantial success in using BSV.
The company is a pioneer in implementing BSV in Africa’s supply chain management and governance. Dominium is cooperating with nChain, a pioneer of enterprise-grade blockchain solutions, to assist government organizations in switching from traditional databases to blockchain-based platforms.
As early as 2019, the Ministry of Health and Prevention of the UAE has already launched a blockchain-powered healthcare database that would encompass public and private sector healthcare practitioners. Read more about What are the Risks of Public Blockchain?
The state-run Emirates News Agency reported that the system would be used to collect and communicate evaluative data from doctors to pharmacists with local licensing health authorities. This approach will improve efficiency by saving time, boosting data integrity, and reducing expenses.
“It will also help improve data and information validation and consistency, which in turn provides a high level of transparency and trust in the healthcare services sector,” the Ministry of Health’s Director of Information Technology Mubaraka Ibrahim remarked.
“With immutable data, all health providers can access reliable information and take appropriate decisions, automate workflow processes electronically, improve the experience of customers and employees, and boost operational performance,” Ibrahim added.
Ibrahim also highlighted that the ministry uses the smart government enablers’ index to construct its e-health services. On top of blockchain technology, the ministry is working on solutions that include predictive technologies and big data—an example of which is artificial intelligence—to improve the quality, efficiency, and safety of the nation’s healthcare system.
Government bodies and global enterprises around the world are now seeking to traverse the blockchain space. Extensive and intensive efforts in the Middle East showcase the transformative influence of blockchain in the digitization of the global economy.
