17 Feb 2022

Carechain project is dedicated to the design and implementation of an environment for the execution of smart contracts for parametric microinsurance, based on the distributed ledger. And what makes this project different from others? Find out in this interview with team member Javier Prieto!

 

How did you hear about ONTOCHAIN and what drove you to apply?

Our research team believes that distributed ledger technologies are still the future and that they will transform all industry sectors and management functions.

ONTOCHAIN's concept of seeking solutions together under the same European regulatory framework is elementary in a world where each project goes its own way, without a common framework and with disparate solutions. ONTOCHAIN is an ecosystem with the same cause to preserve the integrity of the information under allowing the management of knowledge in a common framework and from our point of view, this is where distributed technology projects should work.

 

Tell us a bit about the story behind your team. What drives you and what brought you together?

Eurostar and University of Salamanca had previously contributed in another project, we had the intention of creating a project like this from scratch and we had been studying for some time how to do it. With ONTOCHAIN we discovered an ecosystem where many of our problems were solved in a European framework, and the possibility of integrating with other projects, and a greater dissemination of these.

 

Can you briefly explain your project and its contribution to the ONTOCHAIN software ecosystem?

The idea behind Carechain project is design and implement an environment for the execution of smart contracts for parametric microinsurance based on the distributed ledger, to guarantee users the application of coverage when meeting contract conditions, in search for new market niches and allowing the revitalisation of the economy caused by COVID19 pandemic.

Microinsurances and similar financial operations are one of the most security and trust demanding sections for online operations, creating a platform for microinsurance contracting and managing automated service, with security, traceability and trust using DLT technologies.

It will provide mechanism for customers and insurers to establish Smart Contracts that reflect parametric micro-insurances.

 

How did you come up with this idea? What’s unique about it? And what will be the end user benefits?

This idea originates from a particular use case, the creation of parametric microinsurance for agriculture and livestock. Let's observe with this use case that these clauses are easily automated with current technology and that in times of social distancing, it was a way to obtain better results in less time and that it was easily adaptable to a distributed ledger ecosystem without human intervention. With Carechain, we wanted to completely rethink the initial idea, and make it more scalable through the creation of Smart Contracts for microinsurance clauses in a parametric way.

The main result will be a DLT platform for the contracting and management of parametric microinsurance. There are other competitors in the market, but they are only centred in specific use cases, however Carechain is most ambitious, and with it you can create any type of microinsurance adapted to any market.

 

You are contributing to ONTOCHAIN’s mission of delivering a new software ecosystem for trusted, traceable & transparent ontological knowledge. How is ONTOCHAIN contributing to your own ambitions?

ONTOCHAIN supports us in the development of our platform, providing both training and new ideas for our work.

The ONTOCHAIN ecosystem provides us with a framework for collaboration with other projects so that we can feed our projects together and not have to do everything from scratch.

 

How do you assess the experience of working with other teams in the co-creation of the ONTOCHAIN ecosystem? What type of synergies do you want to explore?

We have had different meetings with different projects in the call, and they have been really interesting for us. We have been able to discuss different ideas and give feedback to each other. The projects we have been interested in are those related to oracles and how to maintain the integrity of information from an IoT device to blockchain.

 

What are your expectations regarding the new software ecosystem that ONTOCHAIN will deliver and its contribution to the NGI priority areas?

Contribute among all the participants of the ONTOCHAIN ecosystem in such a way that we build a standard or framework of general use where aspects such as trust, transparency and traceability are a priority using decentralized technologies. All this under a common regulatory framework of the European Union that facilitates both the use and the creation of new blockchain projects.