Sasai says the medical info you share on Health Status Report is safe

Last week, we wrote an article on the launch of Sasai’s Health Status Report. Health Status Report (SHSR) will enable users to record their COVID-19 status and then share the results with other people and organisations if they wish. Sasai also made a point to note that the platform is built on the back of blockchain technology.

We reached out to Sasai to understand more in regards to SHSRs data privacy controls and checks and the blockchain platform they say it is based.

Who can see your data?

Sasai represantatives stressed that Sasai is encrypted and thus not even Econet staffers nor anyone else has access to your COVID-19 status once you’re tested. The only people who have access to your records are those you decided to share with;

Sharing of the health status report information is strictly at the report owner (the testee)’s discretion.The blockchain technology further enhances the security of the SHSR environment.

We will touch on the blockchain in a bit.

Sasai also notified us that medical aid societies will not have access to the data collected by SHSR and as part of their reply we got a glimpse into what they were thinking when making the Status Report. For Sasai SHSR is more about enabling people to access things i.e services, employment, airlines and being able to produce evidence that they are COVID-19 free.

The owner of the report decides who they share the report with, be it family, friends, employer or organisations such as Medical Aid Societies, airlines, etc, that may require the info in order to provide service.

Whilst that makes sense there does seem to be an oversight since I might get tested today and be negative and then produce the result two weeks from now and I’m positive by then. Maybe the assumption on Sasai’s part is you’ll get tested when the need arises and the proof you’ll be submitting is therefore relevant.

Has the Ministry of Health (MoHCC) approved this?

The Sasai Spokesperson we were in communication with said they are working with the Ministry and “within the framework of the Statutory Instrument guiding COVID-19 tests in the country and the anonymization of such data“.

Who enters the information and how do they get it?

So two people can enter KYC details onto SHSR; either the patient or the testee. The information is entered as part of the registration process. The Health Status report will be entered by a health professional who is also registered on SHSR and it will include the following;

• test result;
• test kit details;
• reference details;
• test type;

When users have a basic featurephone, these details will still be entered on the HSR platform by a health professional – and Sasai said in the near future these type of testees will be able to access their results on USSD. They’ll also be able to enter their own details via this USSD platform.

What about blockchain?

Well, I intended to look at the blockchain platform in this article, but I feel it will become convoluted so that will be a follow up to this article..