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        <title>Frontiers in Blockchain | Blockchain for Science section | New and Recent Articles</title>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/blockchain/sections/blockchain-for-science</link>
        <description>RSS Feed for Blockchain for Science section in the Frontiers in Blockchain journal | New and Recent Articles</description>
        <language>en-us</language>
        <generator>Frontiers Feed Generator,version:1</generator>
        <pubDate>2026-05-13T05:49:43.568+00:00</pubDate>
        <ttl>60</ttl>
        <item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1730645</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1730645</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Self-sovereign identity for verifiable authorship consent and privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest screening in academic publishing: a permissioned blockchain registry approach]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-04-01T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Kamal Al-Sabahi</author><author>Yousuf Khamis Al Mabsali</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionAcademic publishing, a cornerstone of knowledge dissemination and scientific advancement, increasingly faces ethical threats such as unconsented authorship, gift authorship, author ambiguity, and undisclosed conflicts of interest. Although infrastructures such as ORCID support researcher identity disambiguation, they do not adequately enforce explicit authorship consent, verify contributor roles, or enable privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest screening during peer review.MethodsThis study proposes a standards-aligned decentralized conceptual framework for ethical authorship validation. The framework integrates Self-Sovereign Identity, Decentralized Identifiers, and Verifiable Credentials to capture explicit co-author consent as verifiable events, embed verified authorship metadata in publications, and support privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest checks through zero-knowledge techniques. A permissioned ledger functions as a trust registry for hashes and status indicators, without storing personally identifiable information on-chain, and supports revocation. To assess the relevance of the proposed design, a stakeholder survey was conducted with researchers, editors, and reviewers.ResultsThe proposed framework addresses key gaps in existing scholarly identity and publishing infrastructures by introducing mechanisms for verifiable authorship consent, contributor-role validation, and privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest screening. Survey findings indicate strong stakeholder support for both consent enforcement and privacy-preserving conflict-of-interest checks.DiscussionThis work contributes a conceptual design for strengthening trust, accountability, and transparency in academic publishing through decentralized identity and verifiable credential technologies. The findings provide formative empirical support for future prototyping and evaluation.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1765645</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1765645</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain-enabled real-time personalized nutrition recommendation framework using IoT and AI]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-02-06T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>P. Venkata Krishna</author><author>V. Saritha</author><author>Pratap Pachipulusu</author><author>M. Aruna</author><author>P. Jayasri</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Today, people need personalized diet plan based on their health conditions. Latest technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), federated Learning, blockchain technology, and wearable devices help in gathering the information required to recommend personalized and nutritional diet plan and also maintain the data securely. As most of the existing system that recommend nutrition diet has many limitations like lack of privacy, less user engagement, usage of AI models that are not transparent and centralized data storage. Hence, Blockchain enabled Real-Time Personalized Health and Nutrition Management (BRPHM) framework is proposed in this paper. BRPHM is a multi-layer architecture which includes IoT data acquisition layer, Blockchain data management layer, federated AI processing layer, and a recommendation layer. BRPHM introduces a new parameter called Personalized Health Nutrition Index (PHNI) based on which recommendations are given to the user. A weighted health model based on environmental, nutrition, activity, physiological features determine PHNI value. The performance of the proposed framework is evaluated in terms of accuracy, recall, precision, F1-score, Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), latency, system availability, privacy score, and scalability score and is compared with ESCIFS, SEDCAM-2E and PNBDF. The results indicate that the proposed framework, BRPHM enhances the performance by 8%–22% in terms of classification metrics (accuracy, precision, recall and F1-score), 33%–53% in terms of forecasting metrics (MAE and RMSE), 42%–59% in terms of latency, 1.4%–2.8% in terms of system availability, 10%–27% in terms of privacy score and scalability score when compared to ESCIFS, SEDCAM-2E and PNBDF. The results also projects PHNI correlation score and Micro-action engagement score which indicates that the model is accurate and the system is effective.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1631217</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1631217</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Cryptographic open science: enabling secure and incentivized biomedical data sharing with web 3.0 technologies to overcome the open science dilemma]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-02-02T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Hypothesis and Theory</category>
        <author>Yu Wang</author><author>Junfeng Fan</author><author>Zhiwei Bao</author><author>Sheng Zhang</author><author>Liang Liu</author><author>Mengsu Yang</author><author>George M. Church</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Biomedical data underpins scientific discovery, and open science offers the potential to accelerate innovation through the unrestricted sharing of knowledge, methodologies, and datasets. However, the open science dilemma persists, as researchers hesitate to share data due to privacy concerns, intellectual property risks, and lack of recognition. Stringent data privacy regulations further compound these challenges, limiting data sharing. To address these barriers, we propose the Cryptographic Open Science (COS) framework, integrating advanced technologies for secure, privacy-preserving, and incentivized data sharing. Blockchain technology provides immutable records of data ownership and usage, enhancing transparency and trust, while smart contracts automate access controls and enforce compliance. However, blockchain alone does not prevent loss of control over plaintext data once released. COS incorporates Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to allow computations on encrypted data, ensuring end-to-end confidentiality and maintaining full ownership control. Recognizing that privacy alone does not incentivize sharing, COS introduces a crypto token-based system to create a market-driven flywheel. This system rewards contributors and aligns stakeholder interests, promoting active data sharing. By integrating blockchain, FHE, and token-based incentives, COS bridges the gap between the ideals of open science and the practical concerns of data providers, accelerating progress in fields like precision medicine and genomics.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1693540</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1693540</link>
        <title><![CDATA[DeSci EDU: course design and self-perceived evaluation in decentralized science education ]]></title>
        <pubdate>2026-01-27T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>S. Espinoza</author><author>K. Kumar</author><author>F. Laredo</author><author>K. Compton</author><author>C. Yanik</author><author>L. Bishop-Currey</author><author>E. McCarthy-Page</author><author>B. Lukács</author><author>L. Weidener</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionDecentralized science (DeSci) aims to address structural inefficiencies in traditional research yet lacks formal educational pathways.MethodsThis exploratory case study develops and evaluates an eight-week blended course, DeSci EDU, which combines theory-based seminars, scaffolded assignments, and alumni mentorship. Thirty-two participants completed pre-course self-assessments across ten blockchain and DeSci domains; 22 provided post-course data, and 11 supplied matched identifiers.ResultsCohort means increased by 41% for blockchain and 53% for DeSci, with the largest relative gains in governance mechanisms and token-based incentives. Matched-pair analysis showed comparable improvements (+51% and +58%).DiscussionThe early-career, highly educated sample and reliance on self-report limit generalizability and causal attribution. Nonetheless, the results suggest that a structured practice-oriented curriculum can quickly enhance DeSci literacy. Future iterations should integrate objective performance tasks, transversal competencies, and automated participant tracking to enable scalable and rigorous evaluation.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1657050</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1657050</link>
        <title><![CDATA[DeScAI: the convergence of decentralized science and artificial intelligence]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-09-23T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Hypothesis and Theory</category>
        <author>Sasha Shilina</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Scientific knowledge production is undergoing a dual transformation. On one front, Decentralized Science (DeSci) leverages blockchain-based infrastructures to reconfigure how research is funded, verified, and governed, disintermediating legacy gatekeepers through tokenized incentives and distributed provenance. On the other, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is automating core dimensions of science, from hypothesis generation to experimental execution and model validation. This paper introduces DeScAI, a theoretical framework that unifies these domains into a recursive, self-verifying epistemic system governed by autonomous agents operating within decentralized, trust-minimized networks. We present a five-stratum architecture for DeScAI, hypothesizing that its integration enables epistemic acceleration, pluralistic inquiry, and cryptographically auditable trust. Methods include a structured literature synthesis (2018–2025), conceptual modeling, and descriptive analysis of 14 projects. Three hypothetical trajectories for future empirical investigation are proposed concerning cycle-time compression, epistemic pluralism, and reproducibility amplification. We conclude that DeScAI is not speculative: its core components are already deployed. What remains is orchestration, stitching together decentralized ledgers, incentive protocols, self-sovereign scientific agents (SSA), and cryptographic infrastructures into a single, recursive system. If successful, DeScAI could radically reduce the latency between hypothesis and verification, reconfigure scientific legitimacy as a live, contestable signal, and transform the incentive structure of research itself.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1641294</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1641294</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Challenges of DAOs in decentralized science: a qualitative analysis of expert interviews ]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-09-23T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>L. Weidener</author><author>L. Boltz</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionDecentralized autonomous organizations in decentralized science face unique organizational and scientific demands. This study examines core challenges encountered by DeSci DAOs and how these challenges affect governance and research practice.MethodsTen semi-structured interviews were conducted with co‐founders, working‐group leads, and long‐term contributors. Transcripts were analyzed using Kuckartz’s six‐phase qualitative content analysis. Categories were developed and refined to synthesize recurrent themes across interviews.ResultsNineteen sub-categories clustered into six domains: governance, financials, contribution, onboarding, operations, and science. Findings highlight tensions between token‐weighted decision making and domain expertise, labor‐intensive hybrid accounting practices, persistent talent shortages, steep Web3 onboarding curves, fragmented project coordination, and science‐specific issues that include negotiations with technology transfer offices and the tokenization of research assets. The resulting category system provides a diagnostic baseline for understanding how decentralized governance intersects with scientific rigor.DiscussionDeSci DAOs progress most effectively when blockchain-enabled transparency is paired with clearly defined coordination roles, structured onboarding pathways, and credible mechanisms for scientific validation. These features help balance organizational experimentation with proven practices and support more reliable scientific workflows.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1524222</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2025.1524222</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Exploring the decentralized science ecosystem: insights on organizational structures, technologies, and funding]]></title>
        <pubdate>2025-02-28T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Francisco Díaz</author><author>Carolina Menchaca</author><author>Lukas Weidener</author>
        <description><![CDATA[IntroductionThe scientific community is increasingly interested in leveraging decentralized technologies to address systemic challenges such as the reputation economy, the monopolization of academic publishing, and the replication crisis. This study presents an analysis of the Decentralized Science (DeSci) landscape in 2023, focusing on organizational structures, technological foundations, and funding mechanisms of DeSci organizations.MethodsA 16-question survey was distributed to DeSci organizations between December 2023 and April 2024, and responses from 49 projects were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods.ResultsResults highlight the prominent role of Ethereum as the dominant blockchain platform in DeSci, the varied applications of blockchain in scientific processes, and a significant emphasis on community building and infrastructure development. Funding sources within the ecosystem are moving towards partnerships with more traditional organizations, including academia. However, most projects lack DAO features for governance. It remains uncertain whether they will adopt more DAO-like structures in the future or deploy a different organizational model.DiscussionOur findings offer a comprehensive overview of the progress and challenges facing the DeSci ecosystem, including slow project progression due to leadership issues and limited funding for most DeSci projects. By identifying key patterns and areas for improvement, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the factors driving success and sustainability in DeSci.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1513885</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1513885</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Adapting Mintzberg’s organizational theory to DeSci: the decentralized science pyramid framework]]></title>
        <pubdate>2024-12-20T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Hypothesis and Theory</category>
        <author>Lukas Weidener</author><author>Konrad Greilich</author><author>Mark Melnykowycz</author>
        <description><![CDATA[To solve some of the challenges of traditional science, such as restricted access to funding, centralized governance, and siloed knowledge dissemination, decentralized science (DeSci) has emerged as a transformative approach facilitated by blockchain technology, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), and Web3. However, the emerging field of DeSci, faces several challenges, such as the absence of an organizational framework to describe its inherent complexities. This study introduces the Decentralized Science Pyramid Framework (DSPF), an innovative adaptation of Mintzberg’s organizational structure, adapted to the unique demands and properties of DeSci. The DSPF delineates a structured model for DeSci projects that integrates technology, governance, community engagement, and application within a decentralized context. Through the introduction of the DSPF, this research highlights the operational dynamics of DeSci, focusing on the practical application of Mintzberg’s theories to address real-world scientific challenges. The case study of VitaDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization exemplifying the core principles of DeSci, demonstrates the practical applicability of the DSPF. This study not only advances the academic discourse on DeSci but also offers practical insights for practitioners, innovators, and policymakers, marking a substantial step toward realizing the full potential of decentralized science.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1375763</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2024.1375763</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Decentralized science (DeSci): definition, shared values, and guiding principles]]></title>
        <pubdate>2024-07-17T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>Lukas Weidener</author><author>Cord Spreckelsen</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Rapid advancements in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), including blockchain, are foundational to a new era of digital innovation. This innovation has catalyzed the emergence of “Decentralized Science (DeSci),” a new concept and movement that aims to address the challenges of modern science. Given the novelty of the field of DeSci, this study aims to provide a comprehensive definition of the term and explore and conceptualize the shared values and guiding principles inherent to DeSci. To achieve these objectives, an exploratory literature review was conducted to identify and synthesize the scholarly and secondary literature. The search and selection process included six databases (PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, arXiv, and Social Science Research Network), focusing on the last 15 years (2008 to 2023). Owing to the novelty of DeSci, the literature review was supplemented by an anonymous online-based expert survey using a combination of single-choice and open-ended questions. The experts were selected based on predefined inclusion criteria related to their activities in the DeSci field. Seven studies were selected for evaluation from the scholarly literature, and additional 24 sources of information were included in the analysis. In the expert survey, 39 valid datasets were collected and analyzed. The synthesis of the exploratory literature review and expert survey results led to a comprehensive definition of “Decentralized Science” (DeSci) reflecting recurring themes. As no publications explicitly discussed or addressed the values or principles of DeSci in the literature review, a set of shared values and guiding principles was defined based on the expert survey results. This study proposes a comprehensive definition of DeSci and a set of shared values and guiding principles, highlighting the importance of future research in this area.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1116124</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1116124</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Technology optimization for patient safety: a blockchain-based anesthesia record system architecture]]></title>
        <pubdate>2023-07-13T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Technology and Code</category>
        <author>Roberto Orofino Giambastiani</author><author>Rodrigo Sáenz</author><author>Guido Lahitte</author><author>Juan Umaran</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Patient safety is acknowledged as a primary aim of anesthesiology. Anesthesia records constitute the main document of the intraoperative course of anesthesia administration. In this paper, we postulate that anesthesia record systems should be based on an integral tamper-proof design and provide specific technology characteristics to ensure data immutability, accessibility and transparency. Issues and limitations regarding current anesthesia record technologies are reviewed. We introduce a novel anesthesia record system designed for patient safety optimization which integrates dedicated hardware, blockchain technology and decentralized storage solutions. We propose an oracle network in which anesthesiologists run independent Sybil-resistant nodes which broadcast biosensor time series to decentralized storage systems and generate proofs of existence on public blockchains. Records are biometrically signed and incorporate information on the temporo-spatial relation between the anesthetized patient and the professional in charge through a unique personal-transponder wearable device. Compatibility for data science and machine learning implementation are discussed. Finally, we evaluate future impact and technological potential.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1136641</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2023.1136641</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Unblocking recognition: A token system for acknowledging academic contribution]]></title>
        <pubdate>2023-02-20T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Community Case Study</category>
        <author>James Lee</author><author>Mario Moroso</author><author>Tim K. Mackey</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Here we present a blockchain-backed token recognition system to reward the contributions that academics make to the scientific ecosystem. Recognition is important in science but current methods, systems and incentives are limited. Specifically, the traditional focus on narrow publication metrics means diverse contributions are not captured, while bias toward senior, established scientists is common. To tackle this challenge, we explore the potential of harnessing blockchain’s collaborative, decentralised and trust-brokering properties to develop a token reward system for use by research funders. Academics would be awarded tokens for undertaking common but vital tasks such as peer review, sitting on funding committees and submitting reports. These tokens would not be tradable or specifically monetisable but would serve as a validated record of scientific contribution. They would have value in professional recruitment and job placement, support grant and award applications, and inform performance appraisals and file reviews. Coordination and cooperation across multiple funding agencies in developing the platform would provide an opportunity to aggregate and standardise recognition, given academics often work with several funders. This system’s goals are to expand recognition metrics, promote efficiencies, improve the robustness of professional assessments and enable cross-funder collaboration, thereby optimising research processes and practices in a decentralised and democratised manner.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2022.1066294</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2022.1066294</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Can decentralized science help tackle the deterioration in working conditions in academia?]]></title>
        <pubdate>2022-11-11T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Perspective</category>
        <author>François Sicard</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Academic staff’s working conditions have been deteriorating for years. In particular, the reduced availability of both research funding and permanent research positions has continuously led to insidious competition and intense stress among academics. Whereas governing bodies have made significant attempts to narrow pervasive social inequalities in the distribution of research funding within the scientific community, they have not truly taken into account the importance of the academics’ overall well-being in the development of more sustainable financing of academic researchers. This originates not only from the complexity to develop comprehensive models reflecting staff’s overall well-being in the academic environment, but also from the limited access to reliable and immutable data that transparently account for the staff’s direct experience. In this context, blockchain technology can push further the use of more transparent survey data collection and record-keeping that can help mitigate the systematic bias inherent to the centralized nature of traditional auditing. We discuss how research institutions and governing bodies can build on blockchain technology and the early momentum generated by the decentralized science (DeSci) movement to implement the future-proof research funding chain that values overall well-being across academia in a transparent and coordinated way.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.667388</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.667388</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain Native Data Linkage]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-10-29T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Original Research</category>
        <author>James Cunningham</author><author>Gail Davidge</author><author>Nigel Davies</author><author>Sarah Devaney</author><author>Søren Holm</author><author>Mike Harding</author><author>Gary Leeming</author><author>Victoria Neumann</author><author>John Ainsworth</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Data providers holding sensitive medical data often need to exchange data pertaining to patients for whom they hold particular data. This involves requesting information from other providers to augment the data they hold. However, revealing the superset of identifiers for which a provider requires information can, in itself, leak sensitive private data. Data linkage services exist to facilitate the exchange of anonymized identifiers between data providers. Reliance on third parties to provide these services still raises issues around the trust, privacy and security of such implementations. The rise and use of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies over the last decade has, alongside innovation and disruption in the financial sphere, also brought to the fore and refined the use of associated privacy-preserving cryptographic protocols and techniques. These techniques are now being adopted and used in fields removed from the original financial use cases. In this paper we present a combination of a blockchain-native auditing and trust-enabling environment alongside a query exchange protocol. This allows the exchange of sets of patient identifiers between data providers in such a way that only identifiers lying in the intersection of sets of identifiers are revealed and shared, allowing further secure and privacy-preserving exchange of medical information to be carried out between the two parties. We present the design and implementation of a system demonstrating the effectiveness of these exchange protocols giving a reference architecture for the implementation of such a system.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.654539</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.654539</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Wholesome Coin: A pHealth Solution to Reduce High Obesity Rates in Gulf Cooperation Council Countries Using Cryptocurrency]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-07-12T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Technology and Code</category>
        <author>Hessah A. Alsalamah</author><author>Shorog Nasser</author><author>Shada Alsalamah</author><author>Albatoul I. Almohana</author><author>Areej Alanazi</author><author>Fay Alrrshaid</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Obesity is considered one of the leading causes of chronic and noncommunicable diseases; these include diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. The obesity prevalence is threefold higher in the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) population than the rest of the world and leaves healthcare providers within the region with no alternative than to offer continuous and sustainable healthcare services. Obesity prevention would be more economical for governments than providing treatment. Preventing obesity is challenging because it requires motivating individuals to live a healthy lifestyle. Personal health (pHealth) has recently been actively involved in finding solutions to encourage healthy living. However, pHealth does not address the high percentage of people lacking the desire to maintain healthy living plans, which could have a negative effect on attempts aimed at reducing obesity prevalence. This study sheds light on the challenges faced by the GCC governments in reducing high obesity rates using pHealth; we propose a solution, Wholesome Coin, which incorporates advanced technologies to help governments reduce high obesity rates. Wholesome Coin has two components: one uses wearable IoT (WIoT) to help patients manage their behavior by tracking their physical activities and diet, and the other utilizes blockchain technology to help healthcare payers to incentify patients to maintain a healthy living plan by awarding digital coins that can be redeemed for real goods and services. GCC governments’ adoption of Wholesome Coin could improve the quality of life of obese patients in a seamless, secure, and self-motivated manner, resulting in a healthier tomorrow, especially amid challenging times featuring global social distance campaigns.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.477012</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.477012</link>
        <title><![CDATA[eHomeCaregiving: A Diabetes Patient-Centered Blockchain Ecosystem for COVID-19 Caregiving]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-06-30T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Technology and Code</category>
        <author>Hessah A. Alsalamah</author><author>Ghada Alsuwailem</author><author>Fatima Bin Rajeh</author><author>Samar Alharbi</author><author>Salmah AlQahtani</author><author>Razan AlArifi</author><author>Shaden AlShargi</author><author>Sara A. Alsalamah</author><author>Shada Alsalamah</author>
        <description><![CDATA[The pandemic has triggered an unprecedented global demand for home caregiving to manage asymptomatic and mild COVID-19 cases. Older people and others with pre-existing medical conditions (including diabetes) appear to be more vulnerable to severe illness caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Approximately 25% of Saudis suffer from diabetes; these 4 million patients require 5.5 million consultations and follow-up visits each year to manage their disease. Furthermore, with the increasing number of patients with diabetes and their need for professional care, it is difficult and time consuming to share patient-care information among caregivers in a traditional way; this increases the financial and psychological burden of home caregivers. Although the pandemic has also triggered a global demand for digital health technology adoption worldwide to achieve higher standards of health, recent developments in advanced technologies and mobile health (mHealth) applications have failed to equip the caregivers with the right ecosystem for patient-centered information sharing to allow for informed care decisions. Therefore, there is a gap in the literature as the current solutions fall short of facilitating an effective communication channel among caregivers and between them and their patients, supporting diverse caregiving groups with multiple languages, distributing tasks between caregivers to alleviate the burden on one caregiver, providing a treatment plan by a specialized care team to be viewed and followed by caregivers and patients, and alerting everyone in case of an emergency. Based on the need for empowering home caregivers to cope with the pressure, we propose eHomeCaregiving, an mHealth solution that can build a transparent blockchain-based patient-centered family caregiving ecosystem. eHomeCaregiving facilitates care continuity in patients with type 2 diabetes in Saudi Arabia by integrating care, saving time and efforts of all caregivers, and improving the patient’s quality of life and outcomes, particularly in terms of facing emerging challenges amid the pandemic.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.631648</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.631648</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Unchaining Collective Intelligence for Science, Research, and Technology Development by Blockchain-Boosted Community Participation]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-05-07T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Perspective</category>
        <author>Jens Ducrée</author><author>Martin Etzrodt</author><author>Sönke Bartling</author><author>Ray Walshe</author><author>Tomás Harrington</author><author>Neslihan Wittek</author><author>Sebastian Posth</author><author>Kevin Wittek</author><author>Andrei Ionita</author><author>Wolfgang Prinz</author><author>Dimitrios Kogias</author><author>Tiago Paixão</author><author>Iosif Peterfi</author><author>James Lawton</author>
        <description><![CDATA[Since its launch just over a decade ago by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, the distributed ledger technology (DLT) blockchain has followed a breathtaking trajectory into manifold application spaces. This study aper analyses how key factors underpinning the success of this ground-breaking “Internet of value” technology, such as staking of collateral (“skin in the game”), competitive crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and prediction markets, can be applied to substantially innovate the legacy organization of science, research, and technology development (RTD). Here, we elaborate a highly integrative, community-based strategy where a token-based crypto-economy supports finding best possible consensus, trust, and truth by adding unconventional elements known from reputation systems, betting, secondary markets, and social networking. These tokens support the holder’s formalized reputation and are used in liquid-democracy style governance and arbitration within projects or community-driven initiatives. This participatory research model serves as a solid basis for comprehensively leveraging collective intelligence by effectively incentivizing contributions from the crowd, such as intellectual property work, validation, assessment, infrastructure, education, assessment, governance, publication, and promotion of projects. On the analogy of its current blockbusters like peer-to-peer structured decentralized finance (“DeFi”), blockchain technology can seminally enhance the efficiency of science and RTD initiatives, even permitting to fully stage operations as a chiefless decentralized autonomous organization (DAOs).]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.599428</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.599428</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Envisioning the Veracity of Digital Ecosystem in Improvising Effective Pandemic Response]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-02-10T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Mini Review</category>
        <author>Aditya Bharti</author><author>Supriya Krishnan</author><author>Sudhanshu Kumar Bharti</author>
        <description><![CDATA[The obfuscation and the kind of cover-up or delay in COVID-19 crisis response put the veracity of global healthcare settings at stake and appended a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions. The ineffectual surveillance systems of public health and social measures cause the swift viral transmission pace amid mounting death toll and necessitate for an effective, cohesive, and strategic response. The digital ecosystem can serve the purposes intended in a transparent and immutable manner. This article highlights the problems encountered by the global healthcare settings in responding to pandemic and throws light on how the global digital ecosystem can handle crisis by managing the landscape radically through transparent information sharing via Internet of things (IoT) with the data being utilized by artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies on a cross-disciplinary collaborative basis. It will help to develop and provide borderless solutions of public health via monitoring, surveillance, detection, and prevention as well as digi-tool-assisted repurposed treatment by the use of authentic and decentralized distributed database that makes all contributors (participating countries, United Nations Organizations, the world medical associations, and global media and publications) accountable, inviolable, and efficient to tackle healthcare processes. It will extricate a blanket ban on information sharing thereby bringing democracy and freedom.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.615726</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.615726</link>
        <title><![CDATA[A Peer-To-Peer Publication Model on Blockchain]]></title>
        <pubdate>2021-02-02T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Hypothesis and Theory</category>
        <author>Imtiaz Khan</author><author>Ali Shahaab</author>
        <description><![CDATA[In the past few decades, there has been a sharp rise of research irreproducibility and retraction, to a point that now is deemed as a crisis. Addressing this crisis, we present a peer-to-peer (P2P) publication model that utilizes blockchain and smart contract technologies. Focusing primarily on researchers and reviewers, the conceptual P2P publication model addresses the sociocultural and incentivization aspects of the irreproducibility crisis. In the P2P publication model, instead of a complete publication, a preapproved experimental design will be published on an incremental basis (unit-by-unit) and authorship will be shared with reviewers. The concept of the P2P publication model was inspired by the transformational journey the music publishing industry has undertaken as it traverses through vinyl age (complete albums) to the Spotify age (single-by-single), where there is a growing inclination among artists toward building an incremental album, taking account of feedback from fans and utilizing automated revenue collection and sharing systems. The ability to publish incrementally through the P2P publication model will relieve researchers from the burden of publishing complete and “good results” while simultaneously incentivizing reviewers to undertake rigorous review work to gain authorship credit in the research. The proposed P2P publication model aims to transform the century-old publication model and incentivization structure in alignment with open access publication ethos of the 21st century.]]></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.606413</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.606413</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Blockchain Biology]]></title>
        <pubdate>2020-12-01T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Opinion</category>
        <author>Alfred C. Chin</author>
        <description></description>
      </item><item>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.586525</guid>
        <link>https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2020.586525</link>
        <title><![CDATA[Open Platform Concept for Blockchain-Enabled Crowdsourcing of Technology Development and Supply Chains]]></title>
        <pubdate>2020-11-19T00:00:00Z</pubdate>
        <category>Perspective</category>
        <author>Jens Ducrée</author><author>Max Gravitt</author><author>Ray Walshe</author><author>Sönke Bartling</author><author>Martin Etzrodt</author><author>Tomás Harrington</author>
        <description><![CDATA[We outline the concept of an open technology platform that builds upon a publicly accessible library of fluidic designs, manufacturing processes, and experimental characterization, as well as virtualization by a “digital twin” based on modeling, simulation, and cloud computing. Backed by the rapidly emerging Web3 technology “Blockchain,” we significantly extend traditional approaches to effectively incentivize broader participation by an interdisciplinary “value network” of diverse players. Ranging from skilled individuals (the “citizen scientist” and the “garage entrepreneur”) and more established research institutions to companies with their infrastructures, equipment, and services, the novel platform approach enables all stakeholders to jointly contribute to value creation along more decentralized supply chain designs including research and technology development (RTD). A blockchain-enabled token economy efficiently leverages the “Wisdom of the Crowds” and secures “trust” and transparency by reputation systems requiring “skin in the game” from contributors. Prediction markets are created for guiding decision making, planning, and allocation of funding; competitive parallelization of work and its validation from independent participants substantially enhances quality, credibility, and speed of project outcomes in the real world along the entire path from RTD, fabrication, and testing to eventual commercialization. This novel, Blockchain-backed, open platform concept can be led by a corporation, academic entity, a loosely organized group, or even “chieflessly” within a smart-contract encoded Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). The proposed strategy is particularly attractive for highly interdisciplinary fields like microfluidic Lab-on-a-Chip systems in the context of manifold applications in the Life Sciences. As an exemplar, we outline the centrifugal “Lab-on-a-Disc” technology. Rather than engaging in all sub-disciplines themselves, many smaller, highly innovative actors can focus on strengthening the product component distinguishing their unique selling point (USP), e.g., a particular bioassay, detection scheme, or application scenario. In this effort, system integrators access underlying commons like fluidic design, manufacture, instrumentation, and software from a more resilient and diversified supply chain, e.g., based on a verified pool of community-endorsed or certified providers.]]></description>
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