Blockchain-based Certification of Healthcare Professionals
Project: Blockchain-based Certification of Healthcare Professionals
Implemented by: The Andan Foundation, THI, CGFNS, UNHCR, Procivis
Shortlisted for the MIT Solve Challenge 2018, Frontlines of Health
The worldwide shortage of more than 7.2 million healthcare professionals constitutes one of the most pressing global health issues of our time. Within refugee populations globally are untold numbers of precisely such professionals, who represent a potential workforce asset in their host countries, their home countries, or any other country with a skills shortage.
Sadly, refugee healthcare professionals and caregivers are often not allowed to work in their host countries. Also, many lose their qualifications when they flee for their lives and, as such, cannot return to work anywhere. Without a timely intervention in the form of professional credential restoration, these individuals within displaced populations represent a huge economic and skillset loss.
This project is a collaboration between The Andan Foundation, The Humanized Internet, and the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools. It aims to requalify refugee caregivers and thus allow them to practice again. The greater goal is to improve the employability of refugees in the healthcare sector on a global level, to address the worldwide skills shortage. Doing so will also offer refugees the profound psychological benefit of being able to maintain and further develop their personal and professional identities at a time of great emotional and physical upheaval in their lives.
The target population is experienced refugee caregivers who hold qualifications in areas including children’s health and aged care, registered nurses, physical therapists, medical technicians, and speech or language therapists. The project is centered on the use of blockchain technology to enable refugees’ professional identities to be digitally stored and then used to support their ongoing employability and international mobility.
This solution takes into account the fact that many existing refugees, living in either camp or urban situations, are likely to have no access to their certifications or to the institution that originally issued them. Since blockchain is decentralized by nature, we aim to leverage this technology to enable individuals to hold and control their data, which can be still accessed and used during humanitarian situations such as wars and natural disasters.
