CQU innovation wows at CSIRO ON Prime showcase event
An integrated and automated consent management system using blockchain that could help better protect the privacy of healthcare recipients and devised by CQUniversity researchers, has been selected for further development through Australia’s national science agency’s CSIRO ON Prime innovation program.
CQU researchers Dr Fariza Sabrina, Dr Salahuddin Azad, Dr MD Mamunur Rashid, Dr Tony Sahama and Dr Umair Ullah Tariq, were awarded $5000 after impressing the ON Prime program organisers with their ‘Self-managed Data Privacy’ concept.
Dr Sabrina said the Self-managed Data Privacy team came up with several hypotheses and concepts looking at solving the issue of consent and privacy for healthcare users.
“The Self-managed Data Privacy research is about transferring responsibility of managing privacy to customers, so that it reduces the burden of privacy management for the organisations, which would also improve customers trust on the system,” she said.
“Our solution is that we are developing an integrated and automated consent management system using blockchain.
“Healthcare recipients would be able to give their consent through a mobile or web-based application. The system will record the history of all record accesses so the healthcare recipients will know who used their data.”
The team developed customer profiles of the target customer segment and a value map to understand the pains and gains of the stakeholders. They also developed a business model to identify the revenue streams, channels, and cost structure. More than 100 stakeholders were interviewed by the team to develop their hypotheses.
The team presented their work at two events in June - the CSIRO ON Prime Showcase in Sydney, and a virtual showcase where they demonstrated the insights gained from their customer discovery and market validation activities.
“From the customer’s perspective, the proposal would give them the satisfaction of having control over their data and from business perspective, it would also reduce the liability of the businesses in maintaining the privacy of customer data,” she said.
“So far, we have received an overwhelming response from various government agencies and industry partners. This has the potential to increase CQUniversity’s footprint in data privacy research.”
She said the prize money would be used for further research, including travel for the team members. They also received a marketing bonus prize to help create a marketing video to highlight their research.
“Currently we are liaising with different governments agencies and industry partners, and we see strong possibilities for external research partnerships,” she said.
“We see very strong potential in our research, and we would like to participate in CSIRO ON Accelerate program next year to take our research further.”
CSIRO is Australia’s national science agency and innovation catalyst. We solve the greatest challenges through innovative science and technology. Our collaborative research turns science into solutions for food security and quality; clean energy and resources; health and wellbeing; resilient and valuable environments; innovative industries; and a secure Australia and region.
