Over the past decade, there have been many innovations in new payment and care delivery models and technology, from telemedicine to artificial intelligence (AI) to blockchain. These innovations, however, must be used in tandem to drive real change. We review each of these innovations and propose a model for how they can be combined to be greater than the sum of their parts. In doing so, we can create a global, decentralized health system that truly puts patient care at the center, while supporting and further enabling the clinicians who make this care possible, to deliver higher quality care at a fraction of the cost. Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Behavioral Health, Blockchain, Collaborative Care, Decentralization,Direct Primary Care, Ethereum, Integration, Payment Models, Telemedicine, Virtual Assistants
Open access
Biomedical Ethics and Regulation
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
The rise of centralized mining pools for risk sharing does not necessarily undermine the decentralization required for permissionless blockchains: Each individual miner's cross-pool diversification and endogenous fees charged by pools generally sustain decentralization, because larger pools better internalize their externality on global hash rates, charge higher fees, attract disproportionately fewer miners, and thus grow more slowly. Instead, mining pools as a financial innovation escalate the arms race among competing miners and thus significantly increase the energy consumption of proof-of-work-based consensus mechanisms. Empirical evidence from Bitcoin mining supports our model predictions. The economic insights inform many other blockchain protocols as well as the industrial organization of mainstream sectors with similar characteristics but ambiguous prior findings.
Block chain, the technology behind Bit coin, promises to be nothing less than Internet 2.0. The financial services industry, in particular, is preparing for the disruption block chain/distributed ledger technology promises to cause. In the current business environment, the majority of startups and small businesses have to look for alternative sources of funding given that ‘going public’ is increasingly expensive. The crowd funding space has seen tremendous growth as an alternative way to raise capital by businesses. However, these crowd funded shares cannot be traded for 7 - 10 years on average on any given platform in the current market scenario. To build a trading platform on the block chain which completely P2P, immutable, fully transparent and low cost is presents some key design issues. In particular, the issue of liquidity - and price discovery - on the block chain continues to be a puzzle. At the same time, the proposition of removing middlemen from equities trading is a very attractive one, streamlining the process of capital formation with higher market efficiency. The current paper addresses the following key questions: How can a DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) trading platform ensure adequate liquidity? What would be the process of price discovery? While some recent studies hail block chain technology as a boom for market liquidity, it is not immediately clear what the impact of P2P trading would be on the prices of various stocks. There are no ‘solutions’ just yet. At the same time, the lack of regulation around trading on the block chain creates an environment of uncertainty for all players. In particular, the implementation of such a platform can revolutionize capital formation and build robust markets in both developing and developed countries where crowd funding has proven to be a successful model. While my research is targeted at solving a very specific pain point for both researchers and companies working on distributed ledger technology, ultimately, it would be a significant step forward towards on boarding underserved communities across the world who don't have access to financial services.
Darlene Godfrey-Welch, Remy Lagrois, Jared Law, Russell Scott Anderwald · 5 authors
Payment cards (e.g., credit and debit cards) are the most frequent form of payment in use today. A payment card transaction entails many verification information exchanges between the cardholder, merchant, issuing bank, a merchant bank, and third-party payment card processors. Today, a record of the payment transaction often records to multiple ledgers. Merchant’s incur fees for both accepting and processing payment cards. The payment card industry is in dire need of technology which removes the need for third-party verification and records transaction details to a single tamper-resistant digital ledger. The private blockchain is that technology. Private blockchain provides a linked list built with hash pointers used to record encrypted transactions in a structured manner. It is a decentralized and distributed and available to all participants involved in the transaction. Private blockchain removes the need for third-party validators, thereby reducing fees and increasing the Merchant’s overall transaction value.
Open access
Chaos-based Image/Signal Encryption
Cryptography and Data Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Jan 1, 2018·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Manuel Schlegel, Liudmila Zavolokina, Gerhard Schwabe
The blockchain, the ledger that underlies the famous cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has huge implications for many industries. There have been various papers dedicated to research how blockchain technology will transform businesses and industries. However, current research lacks an overview of what the blockchain implies for the biggest stakeholder of these businesses and industries: consumers. This paper aims to provide an overview of how the blockchain affects consumers. We conduct a systematic literature review and enrich it with interview-based knowledge from blockchain experts to show how blockchain technology changes business sectors, name affected consumers in these sectors, derive implications for these consumers and list existing as well as currently emerging blockchain-based products and services. Finally, we warn of the technical, institutional and human challenges and manifold pitfalls blockchain technology must overcome to gain widespread adaptation among consumers.
We consider natural ways to extend the notion of Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Proofs beyond decision problems. Specifically, we consider search problems, and define zero-knowledge proofs in this context as interactive protocols in which the prover can establish the correctness of a solution to a given instance without the verifier learning anything beyond the intended solution, even if it deviates from the protocol. The goal of this work is to initiate a study of Search Zero-Knowledge (search-ZK), the class of search problems for which such systems exist. This class trivially contains search problems where the validity of a solution can be efficiently verified (using a single message proof containing only the solution). A slightly less obvious, but still straightforward, way to obtain zero-knowledge proofs for search problems is to let the prover send a solution and prove in zero-knowledge that the instance-solution pair is valid. However, there may be other ways to obtain such zero-knowledge proofs, and they may be more advantageous. In fact, we prove that there are search problems for which the aforementioned approach fails, but still search zero-knowledge protocols exist. On the other hand, we show sufficient conditions for search problems under which some form of zero-knowledge can be obtained using the straightforward way.
The implementation of strategic planning of the development of united territorial communities in the conditions of decentralization in Ukraine is justified. The stages of strategic planning of territories development in Ukraine are described. The authors identified the features of the current stage of strategic planning of the development of territories. The problems of strategic planning of socio-economic development of communities are described in the article: methodical problems; organizational problems; economic problems; problems of personnel; social problems. The authors pay special attention to the characteristics of financing of the united territorial communities in the Donetsk region. The need to assess the financial situation in the united territorial communities, the right choice of priorities for community development is emphasized.
Law No. 6 of 2014 on Villages provides a legitimate basis for the position of the village as an autonomous entity within the framework of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia. It has amended Government Regulation Number 72 of 2005 on Village. One of the major changes related to the autonomy of Village Financial Management which must follow the procedures as stipulated in the legislation. Law No. 6 of 2014 on Villages stipulates village financial resources which are village original revenues, allocations of State Budget, part of local tax and Regency / City retributions, allocation of village funds that are part of balance fund received by Regency / City, financial assistance from the Provincial Budgets and Regency / City Budgets, non-binding grants and donations from third parties, and other legitimate village revenues. The existence of various sources of village finance is very closely related to the financial system of the State, resulting in legal issues related to the model of financial decentralization applied to the village, the procedure of allocating revenues and expenditures, legal status and accountability of the Village Head as the recipient of revenue allocation. This research is normative law research through library research. This study was conducted by studying the conceptual approach of village financial management that requires the support of empirical data. It then combines the basic concepts with statute approaches and the implementation of budgeting activities for the use of village funds in village government. These steps are expected to answer the research problems and realize the purpose of this study.
Jan 1, 2018·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Smart City infrastructures require contracts between public and private organizations collaborating in what is frequently referred to as fog computing platforms. We investigate contract provision variations from different stakeholder perspectives. Our methodology relies on complex adaptive systems theory, and we simulate different contract provision scenarios to identify patterns that emerge. The specific contract provisions we investigate in this paper are related to analytical model and data ownership paradigm variations. We find that some variations offer advantages to stakeholders that include those who participate in the smart city fog platform and those who may have ownership of smart city fog platform infrastructure.
With the invention of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in 2009, the world's first blockchain application was developed. While academic research gradually begins to investigate cryptocurrencies more closely and attempt to understand their functioning, technology is rapidly evolving and ecosystems grow exponentially. The research is still scattered and chaotic and has not produced common guidelines. Therefore, the question remains: how sustainable cryptocurrencies and their digital ecosystems are.Only a few models and frameworks take a holistic view on digital sustainability. Only two frameworks were identified that take distributed ledger technologies (blockchain) or cryptocurrencies into consideration: the three governance strategies for digital sustainability of Linkov et al. (2018) and 10 basic conditions of sustainable digital artifacts according to Stuermer, Abu-Tayeh and Myrach (2016). These two frameworks were combined into a new integrated sustainability framework for cryptocurrencies. The developed integrated sustainability framework consists of four dimensions and 12 categories.Existing secondary data, self-conducted social media interviews and practical insights gained through an ASIC mining experiment were used to fill the framework with sufficient data. It confirms Bitcoin's sustainability problems in energy consumption and scalability, highlights Ethereum's great potential as a blockchain platform and explains the higher scalability and faster payment of Ripple and IOTA.While 2017 marked the temporary peak of the cryptocurrency hype, 2018 was a transformative year in which the leading cryptocurrencies were increasingly occupying more specialised niches.
Katalog współczesnych zagrożeń ekonomiczno-gospodarczych ewoluuje pod wpływem nowych zjawisk, jako skutek dynamicznego rozwoju technologii informacyjno--komunikacyjnych i poszerza się czyniąc go nieskończonym. Technologie wzbogaciły instrumenta-rium działań przestępczych i umożliwiły dokonywanie czynów zabronionych w cyberprzestrzeni. W kontekście zagrożeń postrzegane są wirtualne waluty. Artykuł poświęcono analizie zjawiska wirtu-alnych walut, by na tej podstawie sformułować przypuszczalne konsekwencje i najbardziej realne cele dla Polski, póki jest jeszcze czas, aby podjęte działania były skuteczne i zabezpieczały interesy państwa.
We study distributed declarative workflow execution in an adversarial setting.In this setting, parties to an agreed-upon workflow do not trust each other to follow that workflow, or suspect the other party might misrepresent proceedings at a later time.We demonstrate how distributed declarative workflow execution can be implemented as smart contracts, guaranteeing (I) enforcement of workflow semantics, and (II) an incontrovertible record of workflow execution history.Crucially, we achieve both properties without relying on a trusted third party.The implementation is based on the Ethereum blockchain, inheriting the security properties (I) and (II) from the guarantees given by that chain.A recurring challenge for both the implementation and the analysis is the cost of operations on Ethereum: This cost must be minimised for honest parties, and an adversary must be prevented from inflicting extra cost on others.
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are both crucial and sensitive as they contain essential information and are frequently shared among different parties including hospitals, pharmacies or private clinics. This information must remain correct, up to date, private, and accessible only to the authorized people. Moreover, the access must also be assured under special conditions mass crises like hurricanes or earthquakes where disruption, decentralized responses, and chaos could potentially lead to wrong procedures or even malicious behaviors. The introduction of blockchain a distributed ledger where the records are stored in a linked sequence of blocks and are theoretically difficult to delete or tamper with made possible to design and implement new solutions for more failure-resistant EHRs applications adopting a distributed and decentralized philosophy, in contrast with the central ones based on cloud infrastructures or even local solutions. In this context, this work provides a systematic study to understand whether permissioned blockchain implementations could be of any benefit to managing health records in emergency situations caused by natural disasters. After the design and implementation of a basic prototype for an EHRs management system in Hyperledger Fabric and the execution of a set of test cases based on the simulation of the Haiti earthquake of 2010, it was possible to discuss the benefits and tradeoffs that the system entails. The discussion focused on the performance parameters like throughput, latency, memory and CPU usage. The system allowed the patients and practitioners to share and access EHRs and be able to detect and react to the crisis situations. Moreover, it behaved correctly in the presence of malicious nodes assuring throughputs and latencies still lower, compared to current centralized systems like credit card payments, but already up to two orders of magnitude higher than permissionless blockchain implementations. Even though there is still a lot of work to do, the system represented by the prototype could be an interesting alternative for networks of healthcare companies to help ensuring the continuity of treatment while preserving privacy and confidentiality in extreme situations.
This paper considers growing fiscal capacity of the European early modern states as contingent to taxpayer’s consent in higher tax loads. It puts forward the hypothesis that war damages were the main factor guiding the taxpayer’s cost-benefit assessment of consenting or violently resisting to a fiscal innovation. To test the hypotheses, we consider data on Portugal in times of political struggle against the Habsburgs to restore and keep the political autonomy after 1640. The war was financed by an entirely new, universal income tax, remaining in the Portuguese fiscal system well until the liberal revolution in 1820, although enforced by a decentralized and nonspecialized administration. A model derives the optimal tax rate from the standpoint of the taxpayer as a function of war intensity, risk aversion, and awareness that evasion would enhance war damages. Data on damages, contemporary assessments of the tax base, and amounts enforced allow the model’s calibration. Results suggest the accuracy of the hypothesis and draw the conclusion that taxpayers’ utility in paying the new tax determined the efective tax rate (tax enforced). This paper claims that ultimately improvements in the fiscal capacity of states needed taxpayer’s perception of high levels of destruction, hence any political regime in early modern Europe must have found in war damages a persuasive argument to make efective a fiscal innovation. The other contribution of this case study is pointing out the advantage of the assignment of the tax collection to local, non-professional administration, for the endurance of a fiscal system, which incorporated an income tax that withstood the liberal revolution. It enhanced the role of peer monitoring and turned out to be an efective way of instilling social norms contributing to build up the taxpayer’s liability, which somehow the liberal state in 19th century exploited within a different technological environment.
Deconcentration is simply defined as the delegation of administrative authorities of the central government to the lower level of governments along with the transfer of funds to finance the implementation of the authorities. Deconcentration, in the perspective of public administration, is the transfer of administrative responsibility for specified functions to lower levels within the central government bureaucracy, generally on some spatial basis (Ferguson and Chandrasekharan, 2004). The policy and important decision still lays on the central government and the lower governments or units are merely the implementer of the policy and decision. The practice of the deconcentration in Indonesia has obviously been implementing since the independence of the country with some dynamism and adjustments particularly with the national interest, strategies, economic or even politic. The political reform of Indonesia in the year of 1998 is mainly generated by the demands of some provinces and regions to separate from the country for instance those of demands from Aceh, Papua and Maluku. To respond the demands, central government issued decentralization law notably by the Law No.22/1999 which the revision to the previous Law No.5/1974.
The smart terminal and grid protection devices play a very important role in the safe operation of the smart grid. Traditional maintenance and renewal of the center node wastes a lot of manpower and material resources and have huge safety implications. This paper proposes a safety equipment diagnosis mechanism based on consortium blockchain technology to realize more efficient, convenient, and secure device maintenance. When a device has problems or notices improper operation, it can make a device diagnosis request in the consortium blockchain network, and receive a diagnosis response from a vendor or non-original supplier nodes. This scheme designs a decentralized safety equipment diagnosis smart contract, combining response node bid price and credit, and applies a multi-dimensional reverse auction mechanism to determine bid node and transaction price. After a smart device diagnosed, the relevant message will be packaged and sent to a smartphone, which can use the client to set up the smart contract of equipment operation policy. Paillier encryption arithmetic can be used to ensure device diagnosis mechanism safety. The proposed scheme is guaranteed not to reveal sensitive information in the process of device interaction.
“Smart contracts” are a hot topic. Presently, smart contracts are mostly evidence of property, like cryptocurrencies or mortgages, created and/or transferred using blockchain technology. This is an exploration of the theoretical possibilities of artificial intelligence in a far broader range of complex and heretofore negotiated transactions that occur over time. My goal is to understand what it means to make a contract smarter, i.e. to delegate more and more of the creation, performance, and disposition of legally binding transactions to machine thinking. Moreover, I want to do so from the perspective of one who is neither a true believer in the purported technological singularity to come nor a digital Luddite.