BlockchainWeekend 2019 that took place on Nov 7-10th in nyc was an exciting weekend filled with over 50 blockchain events taking place all across the city with the purpose of bringing together the techecosytem of New York City. Supported by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDCNYC), the event became a platform for some of the biggest players in the blockchain industry to share updates on existing projects and a great place to find new projects that enter the space. From an opening reception hosted by Gemini, a panel hosted by Civic Hall and ConsenSys, and THEDEx x Hombloc’s Blockchain Live; to the linchpin event of the BlockchainWeekend Summit, featuring projects on healthcare and the future of blockchain.
“We are excited to see collaborative, community-driven initiatives like BlockchainWeekend NYC that are helping grow New York City’s blockchain community. BlockchainWeekend is a first-of-its-kind event that aims to provide vital resources and connections to residents across the 5 boroughs, from the blockchain curious to blockchain professionals, giving everyone an opportunity to participate in the development and growth of this technology.”
Ana Ariño,
Chief Strategy Officer, NYCEDC
Instead of just a main conference with events supporting it, the vision was to create something with a decentralized format. From Blockchain experts and enthusiasts to the newbies and curious, BlockchainWeekend was a great way to explore different topics in the blockchain space in a way that wasn’t intimidating. Attendees were able to go to the official BlockchainWeekend site and find events all across the city that interested them. Since events were mostly free or reasonably priced, you could go to a panel in the morning and a happy hour at night without feeling you were breaking the bank.
The main event of the weekend was the BlockchainWeekend Summit. Taking place in NYC’s Financial District, the Summit featured live projects, networking and panels from all different sectors in the blockchain space.
One panel that garnered quite a buzz was on the topic of ‘Blockchain in Healthcare’, a topic that has been heating up, and some great projects are exploring how blockchain can solve healthcare problems. Featured on the panel was BlockchainDriven’s Senior Solution Architect, Peter Borovykh along with heart surgeons Dr. Lishan Aklong and Dr. Dan Engelman, the founders of HealthChain, in partnership with BlockchainDriven, who is providing technical guidance and backend development. This project is aiming to revolutionize the healthcare supply chain for medical devices by utilizing unique features of blockchain tech.
The premise behind Healthchain is to use blockchain technology to “ensure trust” between medical device companies, hospitals and patients, all while streamlining the entire supply chain process. As explained by the founders, as they are both doctors, saw that the current system in place is wasteful and has too much room for error along the many winding roads of the medical device system; but by using blockchain, the process instantly becomes efficient. Hospitals will have a simplified inventory system and reduce waste; Suppliers will have a better way of tracking and processing medical devices; and Patients can feel secure in knowing that what they need is available.
“This is probably actually the best use case for blockchain, in that there’s a lot at stake, patients lives at stake, a lot of dollars at stake, even though we’ve narrowed it to a subset of medical devices, they actually on a dollar basis represent a large percent of dollars that are spent in healthcare”
– Dr. Lishan Aklog, Co-Founder & CEO, HealthChain
Coming from the perspective of two heart surgeons, people that actually deal with the inefficiencies of the medical device system on a daily basis, the need for a new system to be put in place was deemed crucial. Questions poured in from the audience as people were curious to dive deeper into the ways blockchain can be used in the medical field.
“Any logistics with a clear supply chain defined which is vertical, where each chain does not have any conflict of interest with the next one, where every single chain is to make every single record trustworthy, immutable, cost efficient, the entire process etc. The applications are limitless, but part of these applications in healthcare, HealthChain can be a very good case”
Peter Borovykh, Senior Blockchain Solutions Architect, BlockchainDriven
Bringing together the various projects across the NYC tech space proved to be not only exciting but also insightful. Hearing about projects blockchain from tech startups to heart surgeons, shows that there is a use case and room for blockchain technology to be used in so many different areas. It isn’t everyday that you can come together with the blockchain community to share and learn about new and upcoming ideas for the future of the industry.
BlockchainWeekend was an amazing experience, it was both very educational and insightful across so many events and we’re glad that the city was able to connect and support this growing tech community.
