Will COVID Vaccine Passports Be A Route Back to Normality – And If so: How?
My name is Peter Ferry I’m the CEO of a company called SICCAR I’m based in Edinburgh and I’ve asked the other members of the of the panel to give me an interesting fact about themselves my own interesting fact is that as we're talking today about the issuing of credentials and certificates I’m also in a part-time job issuing travel docents and identity cards because as well as being the CEO of SICCAR I’m also the honorary consul of Estonia in Scotland now today's discussion is about the hope i guess that coronavirus vaccination now that it can offer some hope that we can normal life can resume post lockdown there are still some serious risks of outbreak in the foreseeable future now we shouldn't forget that in the UK we marked yesterday the one year anniversary of a series of lockdown events and there's been a tragic loss of life and livelihoods that followed and today we're talking about some of the systems that can potentially manage some of these risks popularly those systems that might be put in place at borders but also perhaps inevitably in other industry sectors like hospitality and education and really wherever individuals need to be in in close contact with each other or access shared spaces now these systems some may feel are inevitable vaccine passports and other derivatives and all our lives may be impacted by them so technology solutions have rushed in to address some of these requirements but there are concerns that perhaps in returning society to normal there are some unintended consequences for privacy and personal freedoms in in sharing some of this this data and that's really why today we have assembled the group of leaders that you have before you that who are going to debate and discuss some of the technology public health the privacy the ethical issues the society have to balance in in building the next generation of health systems that can manage the covered pandemic and future pan pathogen threats to global health so as i as i said before I’m the I’m the founder of SICCAR my company deliver cross-organizational distributed ledgers to secured data and improve outcomes for citizens and we work across the public sector in education in health in social care and in local government my own background is in the it industry and I’m formally an author of the Scottish government public publication distributed ledger technology and public services but my role today is purely as a host and to stare the discussion I’m joined today firstly by dr Edgar Whitley who is should be he's waving now and he is an associate professor at the lsc the London school of economics his interesting fact today is he is between lectures he's just delivered a lecture on open data and has to sprint off to another lecture immediately after this Edgar's credentials here is he's been working around a strong identity systems for over a decade with UK government and several international governments and recently contributed to the ada lovelace institute's review of the efficacy of vaccine passports secondly we're joined by Maarja-Liis ferry she is the e-health lead for SICCAR she today is based in Dundee and interestingly for her she's actually working at the moment as a vaccinator her work for SICCAR involves contextualizing the decentralized trust technologies around managing data and citizen consent in health and social care and she's the author of a docent around covert 19 transmission risk certification which argues for dynamic certification of transmission risk based on vaccine and testing which I’m sure she'll talk about as we move through this next up we have joining us from dublin Anthony day who is a blockchain partner with IBM and i believe Anthony's a partner in in the IBM UK organisation and he leads that some of the transformational technology in which includes blockchain and he is the author of the interesting fact about him is he he's the author of a very interesting podcast called blockchain won't save the world I’m looking forward to hear him hearing him talking about sharing some real world examples about IBM's work in vaccine credentials in europe and last but certainly not least we have dr Ain Aaviksoo who's joining us from talon today now especially interesting for Ain is that he has a medical doctor background and he's got one foot in the camps of medicine and in i.t and has done so for the past couple of decades he's he's got a stellar curriculum vitae that includes tech entrepreneurship and he's worked at the highest senior level in the digital public administration of Estonia but joins us today in the context of being chief medical officer for god time who are a software company with a platform that enables trust across organizations and god time have worked in piloting a smart vaccine certificate in the republic of Estonia and have some commercial offerings which he'll which Ain will also talk about so in a normal interactive setting we would now pause for applause whilst i asked you to thank your thank your panel but we'll just have to settle for the the zoom clap symbol which you might find towards the bottom of your zoom window and I’ll move straight ahead to kick things off with by starting to discuss some of the guidance around vaccine passports that we have started to see from the world health organization the world health organization published some interim guidance around vaccine passport passports just earlier this week the sorry at the end of last week in fact and their context was really around the interoperability of documentation around vaccine status which they call smart vaccination certificates svcs with a context which is certainly about covered first but taking a more foundational approach for interoperability around the world the use is about presenting a vaccination docent which allows its owner to claim they've received a vaccine which can be verified by that vaccination source with a context around continuity of care and defining multiple types of use for that vaccine certificate which we'll we'll go on to discuss and in that docent it positions the world health organizations as a as a trust broker and takes a very much an agile approach over the coming months between now and june around seeking consultation with international governments to define how such systems can move forward so with that background I’d like now to talk to turn to the scope and the utility of vaccine passports and and more generally of covert health status certification so I’ll turn first of all to Edgar Whitley who's been waiting patiently so Edgar as we as we start to kick off with the question of if we if we start to understand the the effectiveness of of the vaccines that which are now being delivered into the community what what is the context what's the question that covered status certification is the is the answer to and how can it be used in in society so i think that's a that's a really good question because it really pushes at the heart of what it is that we are trying to use this technology to actually achieve so it's interesting that you talked about the world health organization's guidance around proof vaccination now proof vaccination is an important part but of course that all that effectively tells us is that you've had a vaccine stuck in your arm and at a certain point in time which vaccine which batch etc etc if we're thinking about using that information as part of opening up our societies back to a more normal situation then of course that there's an important distinction between the fact that you've been vaccinated which is ultimately a personal that the main benefit is personal the vaccine seem to suggest that the likelihood of severe illness hospitalization and possibly death is much reduced for those individuals who've been vaccinated and that clearly has important consequences for healthcare management etc what the scientific evidence is much less clear about at this point in time is what effect vaccination has on the transmissibility of the disease now everyone is hoping that people who have been vaccinated are also less transmissible but and that's the but that's the point that becomes really important for reopening society over and above the relaxation of restrictions that different countries are going to have at different points in time so if you've been vaccinated what does that then tell us about what you can do more freely in society I’m lucky enough or I’m old enough to have just been vaccinated in the UK and the guidance basically says at the moment you will still be expected to do social distancing you'll still be encouraged to be mass wearing etc because we simply do not know what the long-term effects in terms of transmissibility are going to be and so if you're thinking about using this status for reopening a domestic economy as opposed to international travel I’m really I’m unclear as to what additional benefits you are going to get so if the pubs or pop gardens are reopening from april the 12th in the UK which is the current plan and i could sit in the pub garden in groups of six outside in the cold because it will still be cold in the UK what difference will it make that I’ve been vaccinated or not will i be allowed to sit more closely to my friends will there be half of the beer garden for the vaccinated people to sit close to each other and keep warm and everybody else to sit more far apart so really working through what that would mean in a domestic context for at that point where we do not know even if we expect that vaccination will also affect transmission so i think that's a really useful starting point for understanding what the normality is that we're aiming for thanks very much Edgar that's so that's very interesting so they potentially unclear whether vaccination status actually can help us reopen some of these industries that are mentioned in the in the in the preamble just as a further question what it might be the what what's the status on on our learning and a research around understanding at some point in the future if we might have better information about how vaccination impacts transmissibility so all the expectations and all the hopes are that vaccines for kobe will act in very similar ways to other vaccines that we already have that will limit the extent of transmission but we formally we just don't know at this point in time and for countries like the UK if additionally we've managed to do a very successful vaccination rollout then the risk of people being infected if it is slightly more transmissible than we hope it's going to be again the consequences for the health care system will still be limited because most of those people won't end up being hospitalized etc so it's so the UK with its timing is in a very particular position that other countries around the globe i know don't that don't then need to do that so this question just come would a vaccination proof allow me to not register in a restaurant so i mean there's a couple of points there so would it allow me to not register in a restaurant and give up personal information well if the restaurant is already doing a socially distanced service then i don't see what additional benefit you're going to do what information you're giving well at the moment certainly in the UK you're just checking into these locations and that data is only used for contact tracing rather than sharing more personal data taking time off work again it's not clear what's the what evidence you're collecting but just prove that you've been vaccinated just means that you are unlikely to be hospitalized that doesn't mean that you won't get sick and it possibly doesn't mean that you're not going to transmit the disease even if you're not going to be hospitalized yourself yeah we really have a lot of scientific uncertainty at this point at this point okay thank you and just to finish it on this topic turning to miss ferry what's the what might what's your feeling on the beyond vaccination what's the broader context of of COVID and other pathogen health status and its verification and role in re reopening the economy well i think it largely remains to be seen and specific challenges are going to present themselves as we begin to open things up again so i mean society's not been opened up in a significant way really since the start of lockdown maybe maybe to some extent down in england during the smer and there's a rush at the moment to get solutions in place but i think COVID and other pathogens of you know zoonotic origin are the long haul and when you start thinking in that way so it's not necessarily how are we all going to go on holiday this smer but rather how are we all going to continue to move and interact safely over the next 10 15 years and into the future and colbit started in the UK with a handful of imported cases and here we are a year later we're still unlocked in so i think an important point to sort of focus on is preventing even one avoidable transmission event is actually important to the ongoing public health of the entire country and globally so one imported case or one transmission can lead to a whole country shutting down and that's just unfortunately how these how these diseases work and so you know a combination of vaccine testing status might indeed facilitate you know easing of restrictions opening public life but as Edgar was saying you know vaccination doesn't necessarily confirm unity we don't know about the impact of transmission and when we look at testing there's a variety of tests available with different levels of effectiveness so it's going to be about those levels of risk what's acceptable for a large scale outdoor event versus indoors at a cinema or a wedding and you know the UK government's currently running an event's research program to study the impact of more intensive testing for larger scale events but there's practicalities to this and how the sensitive information will actually be shared securely with the venue or the relevant party in question so there's a lot of unknowns but i think we need to focus going forward on avoiding forgery and preserving privacy for the individual and also making it simple for the end user because at the end of the day nothing's going to work on a global or a national scale unless it's simple at the point of use so thanks for that Maarja i think also your earlier point there that the nature of the systems required might change as the as we get into later stages of the pandemic and the dealing perhaps with apologies if i use the wrong language with smaller outbreaks more than a more endemic situation okay so shifting on and moving to dr Aavikoo and mr Day I’d like to discuss gentlemen some of the recent developments from around the world and particularly with your organizations globally around vaccine passports supply chains and health certification so doctor Aaviksoo so firstly can you can you briefly tell us about your about your work in in Estonia with with Guardime around vaccine credentials and pharmaceutical supply chains yeah thank you jagatami's working in Estonia and talking around to 40 different countries and piloting it in in 10 countries so we we also have already in one hand understanding from many of those countries but when we started working a year ago basically with the wgo it was not about COVID in the first place it was really trying to introduce the idea that distributed stakeholders can collaborate and also in an area as sensitive as healthcare in a manner that they they you know build workflows which are cross-boundary you know cross country or even between health systems and then yes indeed supply chains and yet after the COVID pandemic started we kind of focused more narrowly on how to mitigate the the risks from this disease now i will answer in kind of two parts so i still am a public health person so and from the public health point of view really the passporting use case really it came quite late in the in the discussion so the first discussion was what is most often called the care continuity use case whereby you might get your first vaccination in one location you then would like to go to another one then there is another healthcare professional whom you would like to you know share your data they have some liability risks knowing something about your past and that use case was kind of obvious and nobody doubted that but they're still you know you still need to some make some precautions in terms of security and privacy and guard time as a cool tech which is capable of rendering all of that and then gradually and i think over the last four weeks a switch happened and nobody's talking anymore about the health use cases and everybody's talking oh i want to travel and then i give you a little bit as a company we also internally discuss our solution primarily is focused on the governments to actually have effective vaccination campaigns so that not the docent of as the certificate but also the information they're in so how do you know that this is authentic vaccine in the first place that you know was captured into that docent if we still believe that this need will be there over the next four years but we just heard all the politicians are promising to europeans that by the end of july we will have herd immunity and I absolutely agree with Edgar so if from the public health point of view the new each new individual infection doesn't pose anymore that much of a public health risk what is the added value of trying to organize and building enormously complex system to manage the privacy of a value proposition that has been defined so narrowly so i will summarize and telling that i think we should try to make the best use of the technologies which enable securely and privately kind of collaborate people organizations is am i am i you know fighting for my right to get to the pub or doctor concerts and building the world's best security passport from guard time no i really think that you know i can contribute to the public health more than when I’d like to go to pub and visit my favourite city London but yeah i don't know where result leads I’ve learned enormously a lot of things and i think that we can provide enormous a lot of value to the governments to the citizens to farmer manufacturers in order to get better understanding you know efficiency of those vaccines with the use of data but yeah vaccine passports to open up the economies i know many people hope that will be the case maybe for this summer next summer I’m really doubtful so thank you Ain okay that's an interesting view so really secure collaboration across the entire public health ecosystem so to just turning to Anthony now who on my screen is on mute anyway Anthony can you just could you explain to us a little bit about how your organization IBM have been working with with healthpass and some of the work that you've done on the on the continent yeah for sure and thanks to the other colleagues for kind of building in some of the context in the background here i mean first things first let's understand why are we why are we doing this first of all because it's not that we want vaccine passports or health passports because that's something that's required what we're saying is that there is a requirement for verification of health status there is a high likelihood that that solution should be digitized as much as possible because that will enable things to be managed in a streamlined remote kind of way think about having to manage you know hundreds of thousands of paper docents going through an airport at the moment you've got something like 95 of the operational staff on check-in desks for 20 of the passengers because each of those individuals are carrying probably five different types of docent their health certificate their forms that they need to complete for departure and arrival their proof identity their proof accommodation etc those five docents will need to be checked and in most cases that's manual today it is entirely unscalable to do that in that manner as we start getting back towards even 50 of air traffic and we haven't even got into the verification in other customer journeys or in other workflows and elsewhere in industry or in sport entertainment or academia so there is a high likelihood that a digital solution is going to be necessary to help us manage this verification process it's also important then to manage the issuance of credentials and let's be clear it's not just vaccination so there will be some in society who will not be able to be unvaccinated there are some in society who will choose not to become vaccinated we should have an accessibility opportunity for those individuals who do not have a vaccine so we're looking at vaccines tests and proofs of recovery as much as we're looking at just vaccinations so let's take that off the table at the moment this is a health this is about health credentials it's not just about vaccines the next part of the story is about the integration so mr Aaviksoo also talks clearly about the government angle to this how is this being provided at a national level but if you're an airline or if you're an employer or if you're a cruise line or if you are a a sports stadium or theatre it is entirely likely that by this summer you will be looking at private sector and public sector wallets being issued for multiple jurisdictions national solutions public private solutions some by private healthcare organizations and how are those going to be integrated into their digital experience or their ticketing solution or their entry and access management a big part of the work that we do is actually enabling not just IBM's digital health pass but the health pass credentials of others of other solutions that are out there for confidentiality i won't name the guys we're working with at the moment because it's not been announced publicly but we're working with most of the public sorry the private sector wallet providers that are scaled and scaled is a very relative term also right if you look at a lot of the work that's going on with airlines most of the infrastructure around some of the other health classes are being built while the planes in the air to use it to use a technology metaphor we do not have for some of those other providers infrastructure that has been scaled to hundreds of millions of users across multiple jurisdictions they've just about figured out nine months ago that QR codes on an app is a good idea now let's figure out how we do scalable infrastructure under the surface which is actually something that IBM knows a thing or two about and has been doing since pre-pandemic so the challenge here is one of digital transformation there's a huge challenge around policy privacy accessibility and being able to provide also solutions for those people who are less digitally enabled so there are going to still be physical paper journeys that sensitivity around the concept of id cards so this is really about public private partnership around both policy development and user journey development and then integration so that the concept of board digital boarding passes is very familiar to most you know the level of digitization amount of smartphone penetration in most nations not all in a large amount of the areas where mass gathering occurs is going to be prevalent but not all so how do we make sure we enable as much of that as possible while being as inclusive as possible to cover other jurisdictions other geographies other use cases refugees less developed nations low bandwidth low internet penetration countries and domains it's a lot but we can do a lot with the early stage digitization but very interesting perspective fantasy I’m hearing you know digital to address the paper chase with accessibility and integration and the importance of public and private partnership not just government so it's a very interesting viewpoint but I’ll turn if i may to consider some of the some of the privacy and trust and ethical issues that you've that you've talked about i think there's probably evidence throughout europe that vaccine programs and in some cases government systems have low public trust the particular example I’d consider in the UK was that of a a failed centralized contact tracing approach which probably showed public opinion more in favour of decentralized systems with strong privacy foundations so I’ll turn back to dr Whitley and ask him although it's an enormous topic dr Whitley what's your view of the dangers of abuse of such systems for vaccine status and the wider hearing or the sharing of of health status in in the covert pandemic what are your what are your what's your kind of summary of the real dangers and risks here so i think this is and it's following on from Anthony's point this is where you really get into the technical details about what data you're sharing how it's being used etc so somebody already asked in in the questions about will i be able to go to restaurants without sharing my personal personally identifiable information well if we are talking about the vaccine that you receive that's linked to your personal identity because of course there's an issue of if it were to become important to prove that you've been vaccinated then you haven't yet been vaccinated because you're perhaps too young or you've got other reasons then maybe you can use somebody else's vaccination status it's about tying it to identity but let's asse that you're doing that you share that with the hospitality owner or whatever are they just going to check yeah you've been vaccinated and for whatever risk profile we've got it we're fine to let you into the busy part the place where you can or whatever or are they going to keep a record of you entering that location with your health data and if they're keeping that record the monetization opportunities to analyze that we can see that this particular pub is very popular with people in their 60s who were vaccinated in this location and therefore probably have got that home address this person seems to be going into 12 different pubs in one evening hopefully not requiring a substantial meal in each one and therefore perhaps we'll share that aggregated data with a health comp insurance company who might send suddenly spot that there may be a health risk around alcoholism for that particular individual so if you are just sharing a no audit trail proof COVID's health status that's one model if you are using this as an opportunity to collect and what collect for audit purposes ostensibly but then someone will say well we've got this data can we then analyze it anonymize it aggregate it and sell it on then you're going to get a potentially significant backlash against initially the presentation of the status and if the presentation of the status becomes gets kicked out because too many people are objecting to it then you potentially in the extreme case also undermined that they the vaccination rollout or renewals or whatever it might be so if handled badly it can cause all sorts of unintended significant consequences so it needs that real care about the use cases the value proposition and also very specifically what data you're sharing because of course under GDPR and the UK equivalent this is health data special category data linked to you that needs to be treated a lot more carefully than photos of your breakfast or whatever it might be so thank you thank you for that because i think that it's very interesting that there are dangers not just to offending people citizens views of their privacy but also to actually actual public health if such systems are abused so I’d like to take that question to to Ain because i guess by reputation historian citizens have very high trust in government digital systems and have famously a mandatory citizen identity system which removes some of the identity verification risks from public and private sector what so my quit my question dr Aaviksoo so is you know does this mean citizens have less fear in Estonia that their data is going to be used in ways that they wouldn't consent what can we learn from that situation in the global context from the Estonian example yeah thank you indeed maybe that is the reason why we are capable of also introducing the vaccination certificate in in april so you know both the government departments all the legal people there they have the experience similar to Estonian citizens for 17 years practicing digital services but it has come with the experience and part of that experience is transparency and also with the i can i can see how a lot of effort is put into trying to you know make this docent as secure and privacy preserving as possible whereas the whole use of the docent which which in the case of Estonia in most cases whatever digital information is made available to to the others you as a citizen always know who has been using your data where which means that that as a cider criminals tell that you don't do cyber crime in Estonia because you get caught and so i also believe that i can see how this eu proposal and also the wgo proposal they're kind of converging towards the end that well we should make this privacy preserving at the point that you actually will only tell yes and no at the border but also at the same time you have no way to know who actually has process to date after that which again i think that the risk is in one hand we get a very limited value out of all this effort and then on the other hand as a citizen i still may remain suspicious about it so that one thing to learn is that and that is also what what Guardtime has learned not just in healthcare but in many other domains u.s government the stony government a few others in europe and elsewhere they are using this information technology at scale and I’m thankful for pointing this out that okay now there is a use case that that needs to work not just as a pilot but really as something that you can build you know if your business on it so in in in those circumstances the certain experience but also guidance experience globally tells that there are technologies that do scale and part of that is that you kind of empower the citizens as guardians of that governance so I’ll finish somebody in germany said aha a few years ago telling effectively every Estonian is policing over all the others how the data is being used so we don't need to blindly trust our data protection authority to make sure but i as a citizen can help anyone hold anyone accountable and that gives the power of the citizens to actually you know trust if they offered a digital service so thanks sign and i think the mention of Anthony there just very briefly turned to you Anthony in a i guess that there's been a lot of talking about about sharing of health data of security of privacy consent and people on the this seminar will have noted there's much mention of ledgers and blockchain and the job titles and com the companies involved can you can you just say briefly because i know you have excellent communication skills what the role of ledges and distributed ledger and blockchain might be in delivering some of the underlying privacy and consent concerns that we've noted today the short sversion is that you're using the idea of digital identities for issuers of credentials for verifiers of credentials to be able to transact or identify that a credential is current active and accurate if you have a pdf with a QR code that's printed a scanner is going to tell you that the information that QR code matches what it expects to see it's not necessarily going to tell you that it has been that it is an active credential that it is up to date that it has not been revoked and so while a lot of the solutions you're probably going to see come out first are available for mass consumption they're oftentimes going to be required to have a secondary form of identity shown in addition to the piece of paper or even if it's a digital proof with a QR code without the decentralized identity or the platform behind it oftentimes you're going to be asking a citizen to show a second form of information to validate that or in some cases a selfie or you know show more information that they might not be comfortable to share i don't want somebody knowing my date of birth or my address when i go into a pub I’m not particularly happy that i have to write down my telephone number for contact tracing if we can do that in an obfuscated way with a check-in type process or a pre-approval process that system can exist on the platform with my identity and my wallet linked to it such that i don't have to share more information that's needed and the system only looks up what is required without sharing pii that's the critical requirement here but I’m not sure we're going to see that out of the gate and that's what we've got to work towards okay thanks very much Anthony and then as we move into the last lap of this seminar in the next he says removing his glasses to check the time in the last five minutes so I’d like to just consider a point that was talked about earlier around the role of the private sector and public sector now i personally know several individuals in my company's work in government who've worked absolutely tirelessly in in public health and even specifically in some of the vaccine programs and clearly in public health is a central role in enabling some of this verification and we on the other side we see i think we see some of the solutions represented by the companies today and but countless other commercial initiatives covering the air industry and testing and so on my concern my question is really around what's the role of public and private sector in enabling some of the use cases that we have started to identify today so i think in in that context my question to maria do you feel Maarja there's a need for strong guidelines from the governments and the ngos that we've talked about to guide innovation in the private sector particularly in SMEs can you can you can you speak to that concern yes well i think you know government should be involved in setting guidelines and not particularly just not be shying away from the issue and to protect the best interests of the citizen and but actually i think that the point of interest here is the need for collaboration actually between public health and the private sector and particularly SMEs and i think it's an opportunity actually really to foster new relationships between these sectors and i think there's a bit of a tendency to shrink away from private collaboration and public health but there's an opportunity here to set standards for future collaboration I’d obviously a stronger appetite to include SMEs in this process will lead to ongoing economic benefit and we've seen high-level guidance from the whole but the UK government response to this remains to be seen so i think there's there's opportunity here for public health to be involved in creating actually distributed trust networks between public health private testing and industry and where the citizen has oversight of what data is shared and when we're talking about a domestic use case and that's what we've been focusing on it's thicker and thanks very much maria and with that in painting that picture I’ll use the last two minutes of this event really to ask all of the panel in turn what their what their view is of the picture of the perfection if we're seeing a burst of activity around the covert crisis that's driven forward some of the digital solutions that can positively impact some of the citizen experiences that Anthony talked about earlier what is your picture of perfection in in for the future role of technology in public health in the covert pandemic and beyond so I’ll address that question first of all to Edgar because he's on the left-hand side of my screen and i know that he has a lecture very shortly Edgar okay so rather than just focusing on a picture of perfection i think there's a really interesting innovation question that's going to come out so in the UK the NHS is the source of truth about whether or not you've been vaccinated it may not be the source of antibodies or for testing but for the vaccination it's going to be there if we are relying on that proof vaccination as a standard activity then the role of interoperability and standards for the relying parties the bars the restaurants theaters or whatever is going to be incredibly important because you don't want to have to enroll with seven different apps from seven different SMEs for seven different locations the tension then of course becomes if any one app is as good as any of the others in terms of conveying the information are we just going to get a homogenized service where there is no real competition there's no real opportunity for companies to differentiate themselves or are we going to get a situation where one app provider perhaps with a slightly slicker user experience or probably a better advertising campaign or a trusted brand dominates the market okay doing something fairly commodity in terms of providing that status but if all this talk about innovation and SMEs and rebuilding the economy perhaps goes a little bit to waste because of the nature of that standardized requirement for the technical exchange of data so that's just my kind of random academic reaction to this thank you intriguing Edgar the perhaps an opportunity for big tech rather than SMEs I’m turning to you who you're next to the left on my screen what what's your views of of how this crisis might deliver some positive results about the tragedy for a picture of perfection for digital public health most certainly there will be lessons learned both in the positive from the positive outcomes as well as negative ones so i believe context racing gaps where is one example everybody had very great hopes and then they built very secure systems and then the public health benefit of those are you know very limited at the same time i think at least in Estonia and also there were some international collaborations that that we participated the level of collaboration between the tech industry and the public health officials and then others i think that was unprecedented so that i i do think that the tech companies have learned a lot during this crisis and the solutions that will come out of this will be you know more considerate of all the complexity in health care sometimes i think tech companies take it you know too easy and sometimes also they have smaller and big fails and on the practical terms i believe that using your health data much more freely will be one of the outcomes what exactly is the feature and the tool i think we heard also from Anthony we might not know exactly how it will materialize but there will be certainly more freedom for people to use the data in a secure manner so that they can actually trust that the privacy will not be compromised thank you Ain and I’ll quickly pass on to Anthony and ask him to stick to about a minute or so you're forever asking me to be brief and i appreciate it there's two things for me thing one is that we actually level up the the infrastructure for data sharing and verification between member states there are a number of protocols out there trust over ip a number of different self-sovereign identity w3c verifiable credential standards that have been worked on for many years prior to the pandemic let's let's level up that capability around self-sovereign identity and credentials management at a national level thing two and i think it's building what i said let's try and see if we can build on that trust layer or that digital layer to enable open health to transform the experience for citizens in the same way as open banking did for financial literacy so we're just starting to realize that it's a good thing for governments to play back our own health data to citizens right i can't remember half of the interactions I’ve had with healthcare providers over the years and I’ve had many different surgeries and scrapes and scratches how can we start providing more open healthcare data to citizens in a privacy preserving way such that they can do more with that for their own benefit i think that's a knock on future implication of what we're uncovering in these last 12 months thanks Anthony open health like open bank banking it's quite a vision that leaves you with the last word Maarja-Liis no pressure then and it really just reflected what the other panelists have said i think covert has rapidly accelerated the adoption of new technologies by large-scale health organizations such as the NHS which has been traditionally quite slow to adopt any innovation and i think we just need to ensure that this isn't limited to the basics so of course things like the rapid adoption of video consultations are great but there's an opportunity here to deploy more innovative and impactful technologies to the likes of healthcare data management in order to bring healthcare in line with other industries and into the 21st century essentially and i think this will ultimately improve things for healthcare professionals and public health but most importantly the individual and it's up to up to government and public health to grasp the opportunity to innovate with industry and set the standard for easy secure citizen-led sharing and verification of health status even beyond covert and that's certainly what we're hoping for and moving towards that SICCAR thank you very much Maarja so with that i believe that we are four minutes over and i think in the coming months we're going to see many approaches and solutions and hopefully standards emerging i want to give my heartfelt thanks to the panel today i think we've found some really interesting things to to talk about and that we could have gone on for much longer and perhaps we will have a we will bring this group back together a little bit later as we see some some developments in the areas that we we've discussed so thanks to the panel thanks to the audience and I’ll let you get on with the rest of your day many thanks and goodbye
2021-03-31 07:45
