SBIR Phase I: Coronavirus API (COVID-19)

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to accelerate development of a digital infrastructure trust layer for public health data around monitoring and responding to COVID-19 public health objectives. This project will provide both trust and accessibility through the application of blockchain technology to public health data to transform it into verified, legally weighted, and tamper resistant data upon which decision makers in the public and private sector can benefit. This innovative combination of new technological solutions will allow for better products, data analytics, predictive modelling systems, and ESG (environmental, social and governance) responsiveness based on organized and trusted systems. Since public health statistics are used by private enterprise as well as the public sector and the general public, the addition of a trust layer to public health data more widely is important as fidelity in statistics is critical to effective individual and organizational action. This project’s goal is to develop tools and practices to make authoritative, reliable data available, enabled by cryptographic techniques and accessible to a broader set of individuals and organizations. The scope of the project looks to develop aggregation, access, and reporting systems which can support new decentralized economics, such as smart contract marketplaces, while remaining interoperable and accessible to users of legacy technology. The solution requires creation of a single, trustworthy platform that combines research, development and commercial application of emerging blockchain approaches with a suite of supporting technologies and systems including: distributed data infrastructure, flexible delivery methods, intuitive interfaces, and analytics tools. This research hopes to allow for the creation of novel resources to support the trustworthiness and consequently, the fundamental usefulness of all public health data records. The expected outcomes include: improved data integrity using blockchain-backed systems, tools enabling accelerated innovation in data driven decision making, and a prototype marketplace for COVID-19 resources managed by blockchain. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.