Hedera Consensus Service enables creation of a digital fingerprint for content for the Never Alone Initiative, guaranteeing authentic, tamper-proof resources for those in need
The Chopra Foundation, dedicated to supporting mind-body integrative health and well-being, has announced its partnership with Hedera Hashgraph, the enterprise-grade distributed ledger, to develop an online, freely accessible platform to share the verified set of Never Alone Initiative resources to fight rising suicide rates and support mental and emotional wellness. This initiative will involve building a global content platform based on the Hedera Consensus Service, in collaboration with CG Creative Studios, which will be responsible for the brand and user experience.
Deepak Chopra, Founder and Chairman of The Chopra Foundation said, “Our partnership with Hedera enables us to fulfill a long-time vision of building a trusted network offering a ‘digital fingerprint’ to democratize access to mental and emotional health resources and support visionary grassroots leadership for health. With suicide rates and mental health issues rising rapidly, particularly amidst the global pandemic, people need access to authentic and trustworthy information. We knew that Hedera Hashgraph’s distributed ledger technology offered the opportunity. At the same time, we quickly found that only Hedera Hashgraph’s Consensus Service also offered the ability to guarantee the authenticity of content through a verifiable, timestamped log of events.”
Never Alone will serve a global community, delivering secure access to scientific research, the work of mental health and wellness experts, and pragmatic tools and practices for everyday use. The platform, which scales globally and is open to all, allows mental health and wellness experts, from medical professionals to meditation experts, to upload content into a service registry, where it is logged on the Hedera Consensus Service and given a digital fingerprint, providing a guarantee of where that content resides and making it completely tamperproof. Users gain easy access by simply logging into the platform to view trustworthy content that they know has not been altered or falsified.
Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, said, “The Hedera Consensus Service has wide-ranging capabilities in the field of content authentication. The combination of high throughput and low cost uniquely enables the creation of a verifiable, timestamped log of events, showing every step and activity in the life of a piece of content, from creation to when it reaches the end-user. We are proud that this technology will be leveraged to provided trusted, expert resources to those most in need, amongst rising suicide rates in the US and internationally. Working with the Chopra Foundation on the Never Alone initiative gives us the perfect chance to put this rising technology at the forefront of solving pressing societal and health issues.”
The development of Never Alone on the Hedera network will also involve the creation of a digital token, the Never Alone token, which will act as a way to incentivize and remunerate content creators and healthcare workers for their participation on the platform. Never Alone will be funded by donations, with each donation verified and traceable via smart contracts on the Hedera Network, allowing donors to review the use of the funds with total transparency.
Poonacha Machaiah, CEO of The Chopra Foundation, said “The Hedera Hashgraph platform brings the world of ‘blockchain’ distributed ledger technology to mental health, giving us a powerful technology to build a worldwide community in a time when mental and emotional wellness is so under siege. Indeed we are seeing a second, mental health pandemic with rising stress and suicide rates. The community will be both global and local, offering a way for those in diverse countries and cultures to contribute vital resources on a trusted platform to support those suffering.”
Also planned for the platform is a global real-time resource finder – “NeverAlone – True Friend” – which will offer individuals the ability to connect, 24/7, with curated volunteers, counselors, mental health experts/professional, local organizations, and hospitals based on their location.
Never Alone brings together innovative companies and foundations, mental health and wellness experts, brain and behavior scientists, government policy-makers, school and university programs, artists and many more. The goal of the initiative is to address the roots of human stress and suffering, advance innovation based on scientific research, and democratize access to wellness resources and everyday tools for those in need.
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