IBM Blockchain, Hu-manity.co work on consumer app to manage personal data property rights

Hu-manity.co, a New Jersey-headquartered organization operating in multiple countries to develop human rights and corollary sovereign laws in a decentralized way on blockchains, will use IBM Blockchain Platform as the foundational technology for its worldwide consent ledger to help people claim property rights to their personal data, according to a press release CoinReport received from Hu-manity.co’s PR firm, Weber Shandwick, Inc.

The organization will enable individuals to command and handle permission, approval, and for-profit utilization of their personal data through a permissioned blockchain-based data market providing support to millions of users.

Human information; which includes media usage metrics, geospatial location and healthcare records; continues to get bigger, and with it, concern around its misuse. The human info market is appraised at $150-200 billion yearly*, but organizations don’t have a worldwide and scalable method to purchase, utilize or sell this valued data.

Hu-manity.co, with an emphasis on data transparency, will utilize a blockchain network to put users at the center of the data economy and in control of administering and consenting their own personal data. Individuals and organizations are able to interact in a more transparent manner through blockchain’s such features as decentralization and immutability. Together with technologies like advanced data encryption and artificial intelligence, blockchain becomes an ideal groundwork for this worldwide consent ledger.

Consumers on Android devices in the United States can begin claiming their human information rights through Hu-manity.co’s #My31 built on IBM Blockchain. An iOS version of the application will be available soon. After claiming their data property rights, users get a title of ownership, similar to a property deed.

The app allows for individuals to indicate how their information can be shared, with whom and under which circumstances, starting with healthcare data.

Hu-manity.co says it does not store personal or medical information; the data will stay wherever it presently is stored like by a research firm or in a hospital electronic medical records system. What the app will record is a user’s property ownership and their information-sharing choices.

For example, a user can prefer to share no data with third parties, or s/he may be okay with their medical data being used for cancer research. Users can also lease their data to data aggregators or pharmaceutical firms, but only if they receive fair market compensations.

IBM Industry Platforms senior vice president Bridget van Kralingen (March 2015)

Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president, IBM Global Industries, Platforms and Blockchain, said in the news release we received, “IBM has long been focused on providing data stewardship which supports our belief that your data is your data.

“With new digital business models driving data sharing to unprecedented levels, we believe that blockchain can serve as a key ingredient to enhance trust and responsibility with regard to data. Our work with Hu-manity.co is a pioneering example of how permissioned blockchain can help balance individual rights with distributed data access at scale.”

Hu-manity.co founder and CEO Richie Etwaru commented, “By creating a global consent ledger built on the IBM Blockchain Platform, people, corporations, and the monetization of human data can co-exist sustainably. People will enjoy greater levels of security, privacy, and control while corporations will be able to lawfully benefit from access to higher quality data that has the explicit consent and authorization of its rightful owner.”

The enterprise solution for organizations that wish to collaborate with Hu-manity.co will be available commencing in the healthcare industry in the first quarter of 2019. As well as being built on the IBM Blockchain Platform, the Hu-manity.co global consent ledger is powered by the Hyperledger Fabric and secured on the IBM Cloud.

Hu-manity.co will also collaborate with IBM to participate in the Sovrin Foundation and a pilot to help members of the Hu-manity ecosystem participate in the global Sovrin self-sovereign identity network.

Image credits:

IBM logo – via IBM’s PR firm, Ketchum

Bridget van Kralingen’s photo – via News Room on IBM’s website