Almost two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took over control of COVID-19 reporting by hospitals from the Center of Disease Control (CDC), an HHS organization. Those who view the HHS as political have deemed the move controversial and raised transparency concerns over the new HHS Protect platform. Government contractor Palantir was awarded the bulk of the project without competitive bidding, one of several HHS contracts it received in the past few months, according to our research. And the platform uses blockchain.
The primary role of blockchain appears to be to ensure data is not tampered with. In a Health Department FAQ, the HHS responded to the question: “Will this data be manipulated by political appointees within the government?”. The response states that HHS will monitor manipulation attempts but also hints at blockchain’s role.
At the point of capture, the data is timestamped and hashed or fingerprinted. “This allows HHS to track when the data was curated, when it was parsed, and when it was accessed,” says HHS. It also enables it to monitor changes.
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