MediWeb3

Inspiration

A friend of mine conducts sexual health studies in Latin America which can often be a taboo subject. Creating a research tool that would make data collection easier while ensuring the patient information remained private would be of great use for researches not only there but around the world

What it does

Creates an application that allows medical facilities to uploads the case numbers of a specific disease, along with the proof to verify it while keeping all patient information private. Academic and medical researchers would then be able to utilze this data to conduct the studies that they wish

How we built it

We used an artificially generated database based on a list of patients and whether or not they have COVID onto a csv file. The number of positive cases based on the data was filtered using a Python script while the libraries to create the proof and secret was SHA256 and radom.bytes. The case numbers, proof and secret was then pushed to the Algorand blockchain. The researcher would then use a web application to request the case number information based on the disease they chose along with the verified proof.

Challenges we ran into

It was difficult to decided what to put on chain and keep on chain. The potential for the information that can be uploaded is endless but for the sake of gas fees we kept it simple for now. We also talked about using zkrollups for gas efficiency but ran out of time. For this reason we decided on Algorand to keep the gas fees lower than on Ethereum.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Coming up with a real world application for blockchain that is not only unrelated to the financial space but can help improve the lives of people around the world.

What we learned

How to properly apply a zero knowledge proof system

What's next for MediWeb3

What we built was a basic prototype. Hopefully with more time it can be built into a system to allow more information to be uploaded in order to do proper research. We also hope to have a proper algorithm in place in order to do a true zero knowledge proof system. As uploading more data will cost more gas we would look into using zero knowledge rollup systems. Finally the front end web application is very basic so we hope to make a proper application.