Cassava Fintech International (CFI), a subsidiary of the Econet Group, has launched the Sasai Health Status Report (SHSR), a secure blockchain technology-supported solution expected to digitise the testing process, establish citizens’ COVID-19 status, enable them to share their testing results through a digital platform and help businesses safely get employees back to work as economies reopen, following restrictive lockdowns.
By Staff Reporter
The healthtech solution was announced by the London-based fintech company at an online press conference on Wednesday.
CFI chief executive officer Darlington Mandivenga said he believed the health status report will help individuals and communities get back control of their lives and kickstart productivity, as people get tested and are able to safely get back to work, while still observing the recommended public health and safety protocols.
“We are excited to be offering a solution that we believe will significantly move the needle in safely getting people to securely get tested, know their status and do the needful so that they get back to work and reclaim their normal lives.
“The Sasai Health Status Report will, at the point of testing, capture a person’s COVID-19 health status which they can confidentially share, at the user’s discretion, with those who need to know – such as one’s family members and their employers – in a manner that respects personal data privacy and using secure blockchain technology,” Mandivenga said.
Blockchain technology uses a digital ledger that, among other things, stores information in a secure way that makes it impossible to hack or to alter the record.
The use of the technology in the design of the health status report will be seen as a crucial firewall embedded in the platform against counterfeit tests and fake test kits.
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“We are offering a solution at a time many nations have embarked on large-scale screening and testing for COVID-19 in order to reopen their economies,” Mandivenga said, adding that while CFI was rolling out the SHSR in Zimbabwe first, plans were at an advanced stage to take it to other markets.
“We have already received strong expressions of interest from a number of African countries where we will be soon taking the platform.”
The Sasai team have been quite busy, unrolling a number of innovations in the past few months.
Sasai chief operating officer, Tapiwa Mushoriwa said: “The health status report feature is already available on Sasai under the Sasai ‘Explore’ menu.
“Users simply need to do a once-off registration to activate the service.”
He added that the SHSR feature on Sasai carried a wide range of functionalities, including test reports and the capability to share one’s test reports with others or with one’s organisation.
“A test report can be securely shared through three ways, with another user within the application, by SMS or by QR code,” Mushoriwa said.
A user can also verify a report received, through inputting the verification code which will be authenticated by the blockchain technology.
He said because of the use of blockchain technology in the SHSR architecture, the platform will be able to validate whether or not test kits used across the report’s supply chain are counterfeit or fake.
“We are working with reputable manufacturers and suppliers whose test kits we pre-load onto the platform ahead of any testing programme.
“Using the SHSR, we are betting on reducing the spread of COVID-19 by ensuring that only authentic test kits sourced from genuine medical suppliers are used, especially given the scourge of counterfeit or substandard health and medical products in some parts of Africa,” Mushoriwa said.
In a separate but related development, last week the African Union (AU) commissioned a secure African Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP) intended, among other things, to secure competitive prices and to protect African governments and organisations from procuring counterfeit COVID-19 medical supplies.
Mushoriwa said the SHSR, which is integrated to a secure web application for use by registered medical professionals, would automatically reject counterfeit test kits and fake test results.
“The Health Status Report has an extra security layer that ensures all personal and medical information is in a secure environment and is tamper-proof, such that bogus or unrecognised tests cannot be authenticated on the platform,” Mushoriwa said.
He added that CFI was in the process of engaging the AU, through the AMSP programme, to ensure that all registered manufacturers upload their test kits onto the SHRS platform for validation.
Recently, the Econet group imported 100 000 COVID-19 test kits for use in testing critical target groups such as essential services staff and the elderly and vulnerable.
