Jane Thomason is an Australian academic who spent 15 years running hospitals and doing development work abroad followed by a 20-year stint building a $250-million revenue company.
Thomason — recently a blockchain adviser to the World Health Organization — says she “had an epiphany” while thinking about the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia, in which the lives of over 200,000 people were washed away.
“No one knew the identities of the people coming to the hospitals — all the identity documents were gone, all the bank records were gone, all the health records were gone. People wanted to send money to the people who were alive, but no one could send money directly.”
Thomason believes that if this data had been recorded on a blockchain, “people would be able to reconnect with their data really quickly and access their identity, health and bank records.” The realization convinced Thomason that she needed to play a role in helping the technology scale for humanitarian applications.
“My blockchain story is quite cute,” Thomason says, explaining that she “completely ignored” her son’s advice when in 2010 he encouraged her to buy Bitcoin. He brought the subject up again in 2015, becoming “really frustrated” with Thomason’s inaction.
“He said, ‘Listen — Bitcoin is built on blockchain, and blockchain is going to change everything and you need to learn about it.’”
Thomason began reading and, after several months, began to feel a strong pull toward the industry. She’s since pivoted into the “blockchain for social impact” niche and is the author of several books including Blockchain Technology for Global Social Change and Blockchainging the World, and acts as a blockchain adviser to various international organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Thomason believes that beyond all the talk of cryptocurrency, blockchain is a technology that can solve practical problems for some of the most disadvantaged groups in the world by facilitating and securing identity, health records, banking, supply chains and supporting climate action. Despite the rosy picture, she remains worried about the current state of the industry and questions whether the industry understands its own climate…
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