 Hi, this is your host Sabil Bharti and today we have with us Brian Bellendorf, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation Public Health Initiative. Brian, first of all, it's great to have you on the show. So, I want to know from your perspective, how do you see this project, the Linux Foundation Public Health Initiative? The Linux Foundation Public Health Initiative came about when a group of us at the Linux Foundation realized at the beginning of the pandemic that, I mean, everybody, I'm sure, as you were in lockdown, as you were realizing this is a whole new world in front of us, with some huge new challenges. I'm sure we, like everybody we're asking ourselves, how can we apply what we know how to do to the fight against this pandemic? And some of us identified a bunch of people talking about exposure notification as a way to scale up contact tracing, contact tracing, which has been done for hundreds of years to try to track down where is a disease spread occurring and who's getting sick and who else should we notify and ask them to quarantine. And that was going to be very challenging at the scale of what we thought we'd be facing. And so a lot of people were talking about ways to automate that using GPS, using Wi-Fi, using Bluetooth, so that when phones of people who came into contact with each other, you could try to automatically figure out who else was exposed. But we also saw some pretty substantial privacy issues with that and concerns that if every city or state or country developed their own approach, or worse if you had competing approaches, that you would really hinder the effectiveness of this approach. And so we started to do our research to figure out who was working on the right kinds of technologies here. Found a group called the TCN Coalition who was focusing on a very privacy preserving way to do this using Bluetooth low energy. And then saw, as we were doing our research, that model get adopted by Google and Apple in rolling out something they called the Google Apple Exposure Notification APIs. And we said, OK, this starts to make some sense. Let's figure out other projects in this domain who everybody, by the way, was saying this software needs to be open source so it can be trusted, so it can be shared widely so that everybody can bootstrap on it. But no one was really setting themselves up to organize that effort and do it at the scale that we've seen you need to with open source software. So we stepped in, set this up, invited some projects we recruited to, one called COVID Green, another called COVID Shield. And these are now the basis for the apps used in Ireland, in Canada, in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, a whole bunch of other states are in the route to setting it up, as well as other countries. And we've done a lot to try to show here's how you use these apps in the right way and build upon the work being done by other cities and states and other technology organizations. And in the course of doing this, so not only have we helped work with the community to get these apps deployed and do that in a privacy-preserving way, help explain the model, we realized that for Linux Foundation Public Health, we really should be orienting ourselves around the broader set of needs for public health authorities. Public health authorities have been chronically underfunded as organizations. They've been, they don't have a lot of technologists on staff, typically. They've tended to be focused on data and analytics, which is great, but building repeatable systems has been a challenge. It's not something that they have vendors coming to them saying they know how to do. And so we realized exposure notification was really a subset of a broader category of technologies that could be deployed in the fight against the pandemic. And so that's what LFPH is focusing on, is organizing industry and other types of associations, academic partners, but really focusing on how do we meet the needs of the public health authorities and build relationships with the public health authorities where we can help do capacity building on their part around common technologies in the fight against this and the next pandemic and future pandemics and other broader public health needs in the long term. I want to talk about the scope of the foundation. Before that, I also want to talk about the COVID-19 credentials initiative. Talk a bit about, what is it about, why Linux Foundation is hosting it and who will be benefiting from it. One set of us inside the Linux Foundation realized, hey, exposure notification was going to be a place where open source software was really needed and an effort that we could help be the center of was really needed to address. The second most interesting use case that many of us started to focus on was this question of vaccination records and test results and this kind of need. We all were very optimistic and hoped that a vaccine would arrive soon. Even before one did, we realized that people being able to prove that they had had a negative test was going to be important in terms of helping people get back to work, helping people perhaps get on board a plane, those sorts of things. There had been some related work taking place inside of another community that I've been leading for five years called Hyperledger, which is again a part of the Linux Foundation, focusing on digital identity in a really different way than traditionally done with login with Facebook, login with Twitter, all of your important data being in the hands of a small set of companies that you use to prove your identity somewhere or to share credentials somewhere and instead pivoting that to a very user centered approach that says, from a wallet that I hold, I have documents, I have credentials that relate to a whole number of things, to perhaps a driver's license, a passport, a diploma, a title to my house, these sorts of things that are identity documents and documents that are secured that are attached to me and who I am, but for which we really had no infrastructure for. So when the pandemic hit, there were a bunch of technologists within our community and even beyond who started to say, hey, how might we use this technology to help digitize vaccination records, digitize test credentials, those sorts of things, they organized themselves into a volunteer community called the COVID Credentials Initiative, started to iterate on use cases, explaining how the technology that had been built could be applied to that, tried to identify gaps in the technology stack that would keep it from being used at the scale of every citizen on this planet and their vaccination record. But really started to organize the startups to the big companies and the other partners that would be necessary to really drive a standardization effort here and drive a common technology effort. So LFPH has now recognized the strength of that community by bringing them into LFPH, being able to provide some funding for some core leaders in that community to be able to continue their work in organizing it. And really what we're hoping to do is again, with our head on that we're our focuses for the public health authorities, making sure that they are informed, that they make good technology procurement decisions, and be able to paint the landscape for them, for them of here's the technology options, here's the best to breed, here are the vendors you can work with who won't trap you into vendor specific silos, right? And here's the path that allows us to get to true interoperability so that you can get a vaccine in one country, get on a plane, fly to another country, and use a proof of that vaccine as an ability to say attend a concert in another country. And these are all like entirely different use cases that need to come together around the patient. So that's that's what we're focusing on at Linux Foundation Public Health in our work with the COVID creds initiative. And ultimately at some point that will also involve open source software for the essential building blocks of this kind of infrastructure. The last point that you made that's going to be my second question is that if we look at this initiative, most of the Linux Foundation projects, they kind of become umbrella projects themselves, they host a lot of different projects in them. Number one, number two is that a lot of projects, they also work in concert and with other projects you mentioned hyper ledger, you know, which is, you know, blockchain, but then they're all so I want to understand, you know, you joined the project, I want to also know, first of all, what, as you said, you were involved very early on, but you're also heading, there was an unfortunate incident that happened that kind of created a, you know, kind of, we can see there, we all miss Dan Kahn, but why you got interested in the project, why you decided, hey, you know what, I should take a helm of this project. And now what happens to the hyper ledger project also? No, certainly, the true leadership around the founding of the Linux Foundation Public Health Initiative came from Dan Kahn, who previous to this was the lead of the cloud data compute foundation has been a part of the Linux foundation since before I joined in 2015, I believe he started 2013, has a long history with the Linux community, and tragically, he passed away back in October, and not related to COVID related to other, another condition, but, but he poured his life and poured his heart and soul into this project. And it was a very personal thing to get this launched. And obviously, that affected and drove the rest of us at the next foundation to figure out how to honor that memory by not only continuing this project, but asking, you know, perhaps this is a point in time where what we figured out how to do with the Linux foundation and even in the open source community, that we really start to talk about how this can be applied to the big fights in our world, right, to the fight for against the pandemic and against the fight for better public health, and, and, and beyond. And so I love public health is really our first foray into this perhaps will we've also started to step into climate and energy and in a few other spaces that you could say perhaps align with the sustainable development goals. And in parallel to this within the hyperledger community, we've really started to realize that, you know, the key use cases in the blockchain space that we've been pioneering, the enterprise blockchain space have really been around supply chain traceability around digital identity credentials around a lot of other use cases that also speak to these SDGs and have particular application to health care as well. And I have a tiny bit of background in health care I spent two years working with the Department of Health and Human Services on open source software to help make it easier to share medical records back about a decade ago. So I've been watching and certainly interested in how the hyperledger community was applying this to health care and realize, you know, why don't we why don't we up our game on this. So I changed my title at the Linux Foundation. I'm still executive director on hyperledger, but I'm now general manager for blockchain health care and identity initiatives at the Linux Foundation, bringing together all these different efforts and making sure they're harmonized, they're aligned, that we're not duplicating efforts, but that we're also going out there and figuring out how do we really make the most of these building blocks that the Linux Foundation has put together in the fight for better health care for the ways in which identity is core to so many of the other fights in this world around achieving the SDGs and beyond. So it's really exciting. It's really nerve wracking a bit to think about, hey, we might really be able to apply what we know about open source software to these big fights, but we're all supercharged about this for 2021. And the second part of the question is also that can you talk about the scope of this initiative? As you mentioned, you may start building blocks, your software stacks. So when we look at this foundation or this project, what will it look like? Are you going to build software? Is it going to be hosting these kind of certifications? What will it look like, let's say five months from now? Well, the core of every Linux Foundation project is software. That is our bread and butter. That is our theory of change. Our theory of change is that if you build great open source software at the core of a set of needs by a broad community, that there's a leverage that comes from that that lifts all boats, right? And the way to make it sustainable is to build a commercially viable and diverse commercial ecosystem around that code, right? So to be clear, we still need industry to help us write that code from volunteer developers all the way to the big companies in the world working together on common code. But to make that code work and get deployed out there, you need to do a lot of communications about what the code does, why it's a good approach. You need to do a lot of coalition building. Sometimes I say my unofficial title is nerd diplomat because I spend a lot of my time trying to talk to people who might be competitors, who might think of themselves as perhaps not aligned with what we're doing and help them understand how they can play a role, how they can use the software that's being built, but also potentially contribute and bring their own ideas and their own initiatives under the umbrella. And so there's a lot of bridge building that we do to make this work. And I think that's really a big part of what LFPH does, but also the Linux Foundation as a whole. You have also been involved with the governments in previous administrations. And now we are going through another change transition is going on where we may get more, this may be not part of the question, but I am trying to keep it not political at all. But healthcare is beyond just the scope of private sector. You may get involved with the government as well. So do you see any potential of working with governments around the globe as well? Because it's just not about this pandemic, for the future pandemic also, you have to get involved at that level. You cannot do it in isolation. Absolutely. This has to be a global effort. And we have already with Linux Foundation Public Health been working with health authorities in Ireland, in Canada, in other parts of Europe. And I've started to open conversations with health authorities in Asia. In fact, we have as a member of Hyperledger, sorry, of Linux Foundation Public Health, Tencent, one of the largest IT companies in China. And we're very hopeful that the technology that's being built can be used by countries around the world to be a part of this fight. And really, we would be silly if we were said we were just focusing on the US or just focusing on even a particular region. Because talent is distributed everywhere as, again, something that the open source community has really demonstrated is you really can build these communities that are global first, right? Even if they're small to start. But yeah, this bug is the same. I mean, there's mutations and variants around the world. But we're all in the same fight here. And in so many other ways, public health is a truly global fight. So we are working intently with public health authorities around the world to make this work. Right now, we are talking about COVID-19. But the scope of this project, does it go beyond that? Because if you look at, for example, cancer is one of the biggest challenges that humanity is facing today. And one of the major work that is going on is imaging. If you scan early in the time, then you can also, and of course, a lot of technologies are being developed. AI ML is playing a very big role. Open source is also playing a big role. So do you think that the scope of this project will go beyond that? And you will also focus on those issues, those diseases as well. And on the positive side, a lot of deep learning AI ML data projects are already there within Linux Foundation. A lot of open source technologies are already there within Linux Foundation. So talk about the wider scope of this project. Right. Now, there's a really good question. So there's a lot of aspects to healthcare and to technology, the application of information technology to healthcare. I love the example of using machine learning and AI to scan x-rays to try to detect signs of cancerous lesions earlier. That's certainly a hugely appropriate application of the tech. And as you might know at the Linux Foundation, we have projects in big data and we have projects in AI. And as I understand it, those technologies are being used in some of the trials out there around applying that to the fight against cancer. From the Linux Foundation public health point of view, our lens is what do the public health authorities really care about? Something like an early detection of cancer by scanning an image is a clinical type of issue. It's something that people who build systems for doctors and hospitals and the like are going to really care about. At a public health level, what you care about is things like health surveillance, like understanding, okay, across my entire country or state is the incidence of cancer stronger in some areas rather than others. And it turns out that it's the areas that are close to highways or rail lines or industrial plants or something like that. So that's where there's a bit of a nuance to it. If a project were to emerge, an open source project that said, hey, we want to use machine learning to do x-ray scans, we'd certainly take a look at it, particularly if there was a public health authority behind it saying, hey, we plan to use this as a public health tool, especially to improve the health of the population as a whole. One thing we also are very careful to try to do is say, hey, if there's a better existing project that this should go towards, then let's do that. I certainly don't think we will be the only health project inside the Linux Foundation and I know we're not the only one outside the Linux Foundation. We're really keen to work with anybody who's got successful traction with their projects already on that kind of thing and really look at it with the lens of what do the public health authorities need? And I think that'll help set the scope for us. As we were talking earlier, climate change, let's say that will create a lot of challenges. So any health-related issue or topic that arises from that which involves the government sector, the public, that's where you'll be playing a role if I'm not wrong. It could be poverty, it could be malnutrition in a lot of poorer countries. It could be a lot of different things. So anything, whatever impact there will be on the larger population, that's where you will get involved. It goes beyond just this pandemic. Absolutely. There's a lot of interest in the healthcare community these days and something called the social determinants of health where things like education levels or substance abuse and mental health and the roles those play in physical health and driving outcomes and affecting the cost of healthcare and communities and that sort of thing. There's my cat in the background. And so those kinds of projects could be appropriate. It certainly be something to consider. We are trying to be focused right now on the fight against the pandemic, but the pandemic is affecting so many different parts of our lives that it's certainly something we're taking a look at. So anything else so you think we are good there and we can wrap this up? It's a new year. It's a really exciting time to be thinking about how we might apply these technologies to some of the big challenges in the world, the pandemic, but also beyond. And I really want to encourage developers out there who perhaps they're not in the healthcare space now, perhaps they haven't been a part of fighting the pandemic or being a part of these other challenges. I'd encourage them to take a look. I mean, one of the things we really hope to do is connect developers who want to have a positive impact with projects that could use their help with the public health authorities or other people working in that space. We never have enough developers working on things. And if your day job means making ad networks more performant by 0.5%, maybe your hobby or your night job might be helping make the world a better place. And if that's of interest to you, come to LFPH.io or the broader Linux Foundation site. And let's see if we can connect you to something that helps us all. Brian, thank you so much for talking to me today about the project. And I look forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. Thank you.