- TMTimothy Mackey
Every month, ETAI will be sharing a term or concept of the month that is related to ethical issues in biomedical research. The Term of the Month is part of our module's milestones relating to engagement and reflection on ethics with the AI-READI team.
Term of February 2024: Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Blockchain
"Indigenous data sovereignty (IDS) is defined as the right of an Indigenous nation to govern the collection, ownership, and application of data generated by its members. Blockchain systems are primarily composed of a distributed ledger that records transactions and is shared and agreed upon by all parties as the sole record of transactions (with agreement on transactions established through a process known as a consensus mechanism); a cryptographic hash function (used to generate a value to cryptographically link series of “blocks” of data, ensuring their security and near immutability); and a series of nodes (e.g., computers in a peer-to-peer network) that make up the network that operates the blockchain. Learn more by reading the following article here