• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About us
  • Contact Us
  • Our Team

Blockchain Consultants

Blockchain Transformations Done Here

  • News
  • Subscribe
  • Cryptocurrency Exchange

pain

UAE minister of economy: Crypto & tokenization “key” to doubling GDP

April 7, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

At a panel for the World Economic Forum’s Global Technology Governance Summit today, United Arab Emirates minister of economy Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri said that cryptocurrency and asset tokenization will be key to the country’s plans to double its economy — currently estimated to be the 34th largest in the world — in ten years. 

Al Marri was joined on the panel, titled the “Arrival of the token economy, from art to real estate,” by artist Harry Yeff and WEF executive Sheila Warren. While much of the conversation centered on the current NFT craze, Al Marri’s comments centered largely on forthcoming tokenization use cases and their regulation.

According to Al Marri, the country has ambitions to grow its GDP by 7% yearly, which would put it on track to double the size of its economy by 2030. Tokenization will be a key cog in this effort, as “tokenization compliments information-based economies.”

Perhaps most exciting from an adoption standpoint, the minister said that the country has several ambitious projects underway, including a study underway being conducted along with the WEF on funding small and medium sized enterprises with a government-run token platform, possibly as part of a “regional token exchange” which is “in our agenda,” Al Marri said.

When asked about how the government — which by nature is deeply embedded in a pre-token economy — will interact with these new models and the need to regulate them Al Marri said the goal is to protect investors as well as the larger financial system without stifling innovation.

“We’re a government, we’re good at regulation,” he joked.

He highlighted two pain points in particular: Lack of “harmonized regulation,” and lack of sufficient regulation. He noted that jurisdiction and regional regulations need to work together in order to prevent cloistered bubbles of innovation, and to ensure that new asset models, such as fractionalized ownership, benefit all.

“How can we bring fractionalization to a level where everyone can benefit?” He asked.

He also noted that fractionalized ownership can lead to real world-meets-blockchain bugaboos: if an apartment has fractionalized ownership, who pays the upkeep fees? If there’s a fractionalized painting, what happens when the painting gets stolen?

Ultimately, the country is eager to lead the world in facing these questions head-on.

“We understand the challenges as such, but we are experimenting, and allowing the UAE to be a site of experimentation.” 

UAE minister of economy: Crypto & tokenization “key” to doubling GDP

Source

Filed Under: blockchain technology Tagged With: Adoption, art, asset tokenization, crypto, cryptocurrency, economy, exchange, executive, Fees, funding, government, nft, NFTs, pain, Regulation, Study, Technology, token, Tokenization, UAE, united arab emirates, WEF, world

Blockchain Technology as an Application to Combat Covid-19

March 30, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

Codezeros

With the past year being a wave stirrer in the lives of one and all, the pandemic has certainly left us all hoping for better things to come. The advent of the coronavirus has largely impacted industries, businesses, communities, and countries as a whole. By affecting each and every path of life, the pandemic has made it difficult for individuals to attain a gasp of air.

codezeros.com

With the number of cases increasing day after day, the death toll had been skyrocketing on to time. As a result, the economy is hit by a hard blow with Sensex falling every other day. It resulted in most of the brands being shut down with big companies facing the loss of a few million.

This emerged the dire need for having a technological solution addressing the growing concern. With governments largely scrambling to address the underlying issues, a number of solutions based on Blockchain Technology in COVID-19 have emerged to address the worldwide health crisis.

Overview of blockchain technology as an application to combat the pandemic:

A blockchain is an important tool that establishes a transparent and efficient healthcare business model, completely based on a high level of accuracy and trust. This is because the technology is a tamper-proof one, and creates the first line of rapid protection, supported by a vast network of connected devices.

This is where the primary goal lies in staying alert about the outbreaks and hence the use of the platform is largely beneficial to address the situation and prevent pandemics. Blockchain Technology as an Application does so by facilitating the early detection technique and efficiently tracks drug trials while managing the impact of treatment and outbreaks.

Can blockchain aid to prevent pandemics?

The technological solution helps individuals and organizations to share any information, data, and transaction in a real team between the relevant parties. The information is shared as nodes in the chain, in a completely secured manner.

The onset of such a technology would have managed to combat the pandemic, had there been a blockchain that WHO and the healthy Ministry in each country and hospitals were connected through. This would have enabled them to share relevant information about any communicable disease such as covid 19. This would have helped to spread the word faster and stop the pandemic from spreading.

How does blockchain help to combat Covid 19?

Blockchain solutions during covid-19, as mentioned earlier, is helpful to track public health data surveillance, and especially with the outbreaks of diseases like this. With increased transparency, it helps to attain a more accurate and efficient response. This can help treatments to prosper swiftly as they would allow for rapid data processing. This enables early detection of symptoms prior to them spreading to being epidemic. This will also enable the agencies to keep track of the virus spread and combat new cases.

Tracking donations:

With trust being a major issue in this situation, blockchain has a cure here too. With its help, donors can view the places where there is a dire need to attain funds. This can help them to track the donations until and unless they are offered verification of the contributions being received. The technological solutions embrace transparency to regulate donations and their usage.

Manages crises:

Blockchain has the ability to alert the public instantly about the advent of the virus and by global institutes such as WHO. Apart from this, blockchain can also enable governments with recommendations of not contracting the virus. It helps to secure a platform for all concerned authorities including medical staff, governments, health organizations, media, and more to stay updated and update each other on the same.

Track medical supply chain:

The spread of Covid 19 witnessed a shortage in the supply of sanitizers and facial masks. As a result of the shortage, a few ill-deed individuals were taking advantage to generate fake products and earn more. Blockchain technology can fill the gap and offer smart contracts and accurate data for the technology to eliminate any occurrence of the breach between the needy and the supplies.

As the supply chain involves multiple parties, hence the entire process promises a tamper-proof procedure, enabling individuals to track the process. The technology is largely helpful in streamlining the medical supply chain and ensures that both doctors and patients have equal access to the tools whenever needed.

Conclusion:

Thus the usage of the blockchain to share the information would have saved the world from succumbing to the pain and how. With the world being completely naive to something as disastrous as Covid 19, it is extremely important to reassess decisions made and embrace new promising technologies. This is how both regulations and technology can bank on one another to safeguard the world from such pandemics ever in the future.

Blockchain Technology as an Application to Combat Covid-19

Source

Filed Under: blockchain, blockchain technology Tagged With: Bank, Better, blockchain, blockchain-technology, blockchainappdevelopment, Business, Companies, coronavirus, COVID-19, covid-19-crisis, covid19, data, data processing, diseases, donations, economy, Go, health, healthcare, information, IP, LINE, Model, other, pain, public health, smart contracts, supply chain, surveillance, Technology, us, view, world

Traders, influencers lick their wounds after vicious Dogecoin dump

January 30, 2021 by Blockchain Consultants

After a pump that highlighted the power of crowd mania and meme magic, Dogecoin has tumbled nearly 40% in a retreat from $.06 Friday highs, falling as low as $.033 this morning. 

For the influencers and Wall Street Bets refugees who joined in on the rise — many of whom were taking their first ride on what’s known to be a notoriously volatile chart — the price action reversal has been especially harrowing.

Doge doing what it does best, welcoming people into crypto with a huge slap in the face. https://t.co/0GpiKe4B8U

— RyanJK (@RJ_Kunz) January 30, 2021

Just yesterday, Dogecoin made history for cracking the top 10 cryptoassets by marketcap for the first time since 2015. The currency named after a dog meme that was started as a joke was propelled to such lofty heights on the back of similarly record-breaking social media volume, according to analytics provided by The TIE. 

While some tied the rapid price appreciation to Elon Musk memes and the inevitable groupthink of crypto’s often momentum-based markets, $DOGE’s success may also be rooted in anti-establishment sentiments running rife through the retail crowd following popular trading app Robinhood disabling ‘Buy’ orders for certain assets.

The move from Robinhood and other brokers prompted furious accusations of hypocrisy and speculation that hedge funds were being favored over smaller investors — and what’s a better way to highlight a broken system than pumping a joke coin to a multi-billion dollar valuation?

$Doge it is.
Elon pump it.
$1. https://t.co/7pvyn2tZA7

— WSB Chairman (@AltsStreetsBets) January 28, 2021

However, after reports of withdrawal issues on multiple centralized exchanges, Dogecoin has undergone a violent overnight reversal, leading many buyers to take to social media to express their regret. Just a few hours after posting that she’d “finally caved and bought the dog stock,” podcast host and media personality Mia Khalifa indicated some buyer’s remorse:

This is the first time I’ve ever hated a dog.

— Mia K. (@miakhalifa) January 30, 2021

Khalifa wasn’t alone in feeling the pain. Multiple streamers and social media influencers had been along for the ride, and stream viewers last night witnessed some wondering if a “nuke” had gone off: 

Streamers watch their life savings crash after investing into $DOGE coin. pic.twitter.com/lxr3BqPAtq

— Crypto Whale (@CryptoWhale) January 30, 2021

Seeing the value of DOGE nearly cut in half doesn’t seem to have pushed too many investors to more fundamentally sound projects, however. #DogeToADollar is currently a trending topic on Twitter, and a steady stream of users are claiming to double down. 

Traders, influencers lick their wounds after vicious Dogecoin dump

Source

Filed Under: blockchain technology Tagged With: Better, chairman, crypto, Currency, dogecoin, elon-musk, Hedge Funds, Investing, Markets, memes, other, pain, Pump and Dump, Robinhood, Social Media, Trading, twitter, Wall Street, WallStreetBets, WSB

Can Tech ‘Objectively’ Assess Pain?

May 27, 2019 by Blockchain Consultants

Pain flickers across people’s faces in inconsistent, contradictory ways. Charles Darwin, ever the meticulous observer, noticed this problem early: “The mouth may be closely compressed, or more commonly the lips are retracted,” he wrote in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. “The eyes stare wildly as in horrified astonishment, or the brows are heavily contracted.” And the experience of pain differs just as widely as its expression—tolerance is a matter of genetics and life experience. What’s agony for you may be merely uncomfortable for someone else.

Ambiguity has always made pain assessment an inexact science for health care providers, which in turn frustrates the sufferers themselves. A doctor’s assessment may not line up with their sense of the issue; in some cases, patients are told there’s no apparent explanation for their pain whatsoever. Many of these patients, hoping for a second opinion, are turning not to other doctors for answers but to technology.

Pain diaries and tracking apps are all over the App and Google Play Stores, advertised to chronic pain patients as ways to identify trends in their symptoms. Other apps render pain as animations that change in intensity and saturation in place of a 1-to-10 scale, in the hope that a more visual metaphor makes pain easier to talk about or describe.

A word you’ll encounter often in this area—not only in these apps and services but in research investigating ways to apply technology to pain assessment and in pain science in general—is “objectivity.” It’s an inherently Silicon Valley notion: Take the subjectivity out of something by applying ostensibly impartial, data-driven technology. Inevitably, the buzzwords have followed, everything from facial recognition and machine learning to the blockchain. This isn’t just classic disruption, though. The call to bring objectivity to the experience of pain comes from the National Institutes of Health, in part as an effort to curb the overprescription of opioids. Some combination of data and machinery may, go the pronouncements of the tech world, do what millennia of humans have been unable to: accurately feel someone else’s pain.

At the moment, the best way to precisely gauge someone’s pain is, quite simply, to ask them about it. But tech can provide some assistance there, too. Janet Van Cleave, whose research at NYU’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing centers on improving cancer patient care, has developed an Electronic Patient Visit Assessment for patients with head and neck cancers. Essentially, the ePVA is a survey on an iPad—tap where it hurts and answer yes-or-no questions about your pain and quality of life. Doesn’t sound that impressive, but the results are. “In patients who are highly symptomatic, web-based measures can help improve survival,” she says. “It’s a powerful tool.”

The reasons why have to do with the physical ways pain is reported. Head and neck cancer patients have difficulty speaking and are frequently tired from treatment. Their doctors get more and better-quality information from them because lifting a single finger to a touch screen is easier than verbally answering questions or writing things down. It’s still a challenge for some, though. “It’s like going through hell,” Van Cleave says. “Their hands shake when they’re pressing on the screen, so we’ve made it extra sensitive.”

According to Van Cleave, their preference for the iPad might extend beyond physical ease. She suspects some patients feel more comfortable telling a machine about their pain and symptoms than another person. This is one of the central, most crucial arguments for telemedicine—that something about tech as intermediary increases comfort. On its own, it’s a good, sensible, testable idea. But—especially in more complicated or algorithmic applications—machines can be just as biased as the humans they’re designed to improve upon and replace.

Stated more starkly: Tech-enabled bias could devastate pain assessment. According to Ran Goldman, a pediatrician and pain investigator at the University of British Columbia, pain assessment is already deeply biased, something that’s hard to fight because it’s so multifaceted. The first layer comes from the individual patients themselves, who might, because of their upbringing, be concerned about appearing weak or, because of their addiction, be seeking drugs. Then there are cultural confusions. “In my practice, children from different cultures respond differently,” Goldman says. “Some will cry, others will be stoic, and that’s based on what their culture is saying.” A child from, say, war-torn Syria (or even just more-reserved Japan) might remain in shocked silence despite having sustained an injury that would have had an American kid bawling.

The touchiest bit of bias is also the best documented: the preconceptions of the doctors themselves. Some of those biases are personal: what the individual doctor considers to be painful, what specific cues they’re expecting from the patient. Others are cultural. As Goldman puts it by way of segue: “We need to talk about race, ethnicity, and gender.”

Doctors routinely underestimate the pain experienced by women and people of color. Studies have found that doctors perceive women to be more emotional when describing their symptoms and are more likely to misdiagnose women’s chronic pain as mental illness. It’s also been shown that emergency rooms make women wait longer than men to receive medications. When treating people of color, and especially black people, doctors rate their pain as lower, make less accurate treatment recommendations, are more likely to read the patient’s behavior as “drug seeking,” and are more likely to deny them pain medication. These biases persist even when the patients are simply described, not seen. (Not all doctors, it should be said, think physician bias is an issue. One I spoke to got spitting mad at the very suggestion, insisting that the routine bias training doctors go through was enough to prevent poor or unevenly applied treatment.)

For doctors like Goldman, the inescapability of bias has shaped his career. “I’ve been studying pain for 20 years. Finding an objective measure would be like finding the Holy Grail,” he says. Goldman sees promise, specifically, in facial recognition technology. In a pilot study, using pictures of children’s faces taken while they were getting their blood drawn, he compared the results (analyzed by Microsoft’s AI-enabled emotion tracker, Emotion API) to an existing pain scale. The API identified the children’s faces as primarily displaying sadness, so Goldman hopes that someday this kind of system can be fine-tuned to objectively measure the emotions associated with pain. He and other scientists think using facial expressions for pain assessment could be especially useful in treating young children, elderly people with dementia, and others who are unable to express their pain verbally.

Trouble is, systems designed by biased individuals—which all humans are—tend to pick up those selfsame biases. Facial recognition systems, including Microsoft’s, are notorious for their inaccuracy in analyzing the faces of people of color. Systems trained by biased doctors will only replicate today’s problems and algorithmically amplify them under the guise of techno-objectivity. In pain medicine circles, the hunt for objective measures of pain must be followed by similar caveats. “We have two crises,” Van Cleave says. “Opioids, and pain.” The NIH is encouraging research aiming to find objective biomarkers of pain as part of its opioid-fighting HEAL initiative. One doctor I spoke to fears that if a marker were ever found, it would become a way for profit-driven companies to deny patients medication. In that late-capitalist nightmare universe, your pain might be assessed by an algorithm trained by an insurer. That might stamp out opioids, but it won’t end human suffering.

The problem with pain assessment, and with all the ways to bring objectivity to pain assessment, is people. Communication across age, gender, race, and class lines remains poor throughout American society. Tech can step in to help—Goldman speaks inspiringly of AI sifting through pain patients’ data, finding patterns and connections humans can’t—but it won’t fix what’s broken.

Correction (May 21, 2019, 9:00 am PT): This article has been updated to correct the spelling of NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing.


Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/can-tech-objectively-assess-pain/

Filed Under: blockchain Tagged With: Culture, healthcare, medicine, pain

Footer

Get the latest news delivered weekly. Simple as that.

  • Cryptocurrency Exchange
  • About us
  • ANTI-SPAM POLICY
  • Cookies Policy
  • Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notice
  • Earnings Disclaimer
  • Exchanges
  • Our Team
  • Terms of Use

Copyright © 2021 · Blockchain Consultants LLC · WordPress · Log in