Bangalore, February 2023: The Kerala Blockchain Academy was honored with the India Future Tech Award 2022 by The IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) India, a global engineering body at the forefront of innovation, advocating and leading technology usage for positive social impact. The award was conferred for the academy’s ‘Project Immunochain’, which utilises blockchain and big data technology to address traceability issues for immunisation programs in India. The felicitation was done by Shri Suresh Prabhu, Former Union Minister with 10 Portfolios and 6 Times Member of Parliament at the IET Future Tech Congress 2022.
The tracking of vaccinations involves a number of parties and various levels of book-keeping processes. In the Indian context, there are issues with the traceability of vaccines from the manufacturing site, through the distribution mechanisms in the network of cold storage facilities, and the vaccine handling or administration facilities, till the end user. Immunochain is a cutting-edge, mobile or web-enabled vaccine traceability system for immunisation programmes in India that provides a completely open-source solution that is vendor-neutral, scalable, replicable and reusable across different immunisation programs. Through their technology, they have drastically reduced the administrative work involved in updating the ledgers and chances of human errors to near zero along with improving efficiency by reducing time for vaccination from 5 minutes to an average of 45-50 seconds.
“Technology is essential to producing influence. The IET India Future Tech Award honors a person, group, project, or organisation that has used interdisciplinary technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain or distributed ledger technology, internet of things (IoT), or machine learning, to have a significant positive impact on businesses, industries, or ecosystems as a whole”, says Shekhar Sanyal, Director and Country Head of IET India. “We take great delight in being able to acknowledge Kerala Blockchain Academy, for its project Immunochain which generated an unprecedented impact across healthcare. We are convinced that the project will serve as an example for young engineers to solve the challenges of the citizens in our nation”, he adds.
The IET India awards aim to reward and recognise engineering excellence across the Indian engineering landscape. The first edition of the IET India Awards was successfully concluded in 2021, in celebration of 150 years of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Now in its second edition, the institution received a large number of entries from individuals and organisations across the country. The awards were conferred across seven categories – IET India Lifetime Achievement Award, Young Woman Engineer Award, The Youth Engineering Icon, IET India Volunteering Award, IET India Mobility Award, IET India Engineering the Future of Work Award, IET India Future Tech Award. The next edition of the awards will be announced in June 2023, and further details will be available on the official IET India website and social media handles.