Page - 108 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

digital consulting platforms; however, their centralisation is problematic on top of the disadvantagesmentioned above. In order to break up the centralisation of private blockchains, the so-called federated blockchain can be considered as an extension of the latter (Gerth and Heim 2020). In such a case, more than one institution is responsible for the maintenance of the network or validation. This results inmutual control since the majority of the institutions makes decisions for the benefit of the network. Accordingly, such a consortium reaches a consensus if the majority votes for a certain action (e.g. a change of code, access rights, etc.). Wrong decisions or manipulations by individuals can thus be prevented as far as possible, and the advantages of (limited) decentralization can still be used. In case of establishing onlineconsultingplatforms, sucha regulativeactingconsortiumshouldaccordingly be composed of expertswho are involved in the added value of online consulting: representatives from civil society, professional associations and professional fed- erations and ultimately, for example, market active companies, medical and/or psychological associations and/or health insurance companies, provided that they contribute a share of the financing. The blockchain then serves as a digital instrument that creates trust between all parties involved in the consulting process and at the same time enables the progress of this technology. 4 Case Studies: Telemedicine, Patientory andMedblock Practical implementations of digital consulting platforms based on the blockchain technology are still rare due to the novelty of the technology and its areas of application. In the following sections, three relevant cases will be presented. 4.1 Telemedicine—COVID-19-Pandemic Onepossible use of blockchain-based digital consultingplatforms in the context of the healthcare system and healthcare provision is the remote diagnosis of disease symptoms bymedical personnel. The relevance of such services seems to be high, especially against the background of theCOVID-19-pandemic (Khan et al. 2020). Due to the exponential, worldwide spread of the disease and its typical symptoms, which are similar to those of common influenza, the short-termneed for diagnoses increased rapidly. In order to reduce the risk of infection for other patients and the medical staff involved, a remote diagnosis option appears to be highly appropriate. Suchaservicenotonlyhelps tocounteractpanicbut also tocollectvaluabledata that can be used to contain the disease. A system of this kind also makes sense because of the containment measures that came with the COVID-19-pandemic, such as the quarantine of individuals and curfews that were imposed in many places. It could not only assist in the initial diagnosis, but also serve as a basis for further monitoring of quarantined patients. Especially for efforts to contain such 112 S. Gerth and L. Heim