Australian cardiac institutes inclined towards Filecoin

The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, which is a medical institute in Australia, has gone in for Filecoin for storing all of its research content. The choice stems from the fact that decentralized storage methods are increasing in popularity where the scientific community and medical fraternity are concerned. The non-Web3 users seem to be in the picture too. The institute boasts of having more than 230 scientists, along with 23 laboratories. 

Cardiac Research Institute was officially set up in 1994 and the inauguration was carried out by Princess Diana. Over a period of 30 years, the institute has stored approximately 137 terabytes of cardiac research data with the Distributed Storage Solutions (DSS). This is a prime storage provider on the Filecoin network. According to the IT Director of the institute, Todd Ryman, the shift towards Filecoin started in September 2022. Public data that was published began to be transferred by November 2022. 

In the opinion of Ryman, the institute did away with the cloud based solutions as Filecoin was more cost effective. The institute is not required to pay any extra fees from cloud providers for restoring data. 

As per a case study carried out by Filecoin DeStor, the institute’s SyncroPatch machine, which is medical equipment meant for studying cardiovascular cells, is able to bring about 20,000 data points daily. That means it produces data worth terabytes in a week. 

In Ryman’s conversation with Blockworks, he mentions the fact that the decentralized framework builds upon data saturation and lifespan and lessens the problem of loss of data. This takes place mostly in cases of hardware malfunction. The utilization of Filecoin’s blockchain technology ascertains the continuity of data. 

So far as the Head of network growth at Protocol Labs, Stefaan Vervaet, the Filecoin network comes with 3,500 storage provider nodes known as validators. These nodes cryptographically authenticate on-chain data on a day to day basis. Protocol Labs’ help to Filecoin is significant. It is also a fact that the data along with the cardiac institute’s data is not stored on-chain. It is the hash that stands for the data that is stored on-chain.  

This implies the fact that the data on the network is not known by its IP address, its name, or the file type. The hash plays the role of an individualistic handle for a user to gain access to the required content. Filecoin provides the option of sharing data amongst researchers, an integral part of the medical science arena. 

By utilizing Filecoin’s allocated storage and redeeming features, it is convenient to offer researchers connectivity with required datasets. This helps in better associations and speeds up research results via the data sharing feature simultaneously making sure of the safety and privacy of the datasets.  

Other than Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, various clients such as the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Utah also utilize Filecoin. Filecoin takes the credit of having almost 1,700 clients, with 1.5 EiB of data.