Future Women ISBN: 9781950336104 The Books Factory copyright and written by Chrissa McFarlane.
Sub-titled “Minority entrepreneurship and the fourth industrial revolution in the Era of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency”, the author is the Founder and CEO of Patientory, a company whose purpose is to “Create a health industry servicing patients in ways that would make every medical record easily assessable by healthcare providers by using Blockchain and cryptocurrency.” She explains that the use of these technologies can eliminate one specific problem of enormous size. She recalls that in 2017 “Wannacry” ransomware crippled UK’s National Health Service & affected over 150 countries and in 2018-19 hackers broke into Singapore’s gov’t health data again causing wide-spread damage. She says “Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology and doesn’t require third-party interventions.” Thus it can help healthcare systems reduce the risk of hacking because it would take too much time/energy to hack all of the nodes within a network to infect the system. Users either can own their own information by joining the chain or by helping to secure the servers and distribute the data on a network and that variations of the system are being used in numerous countries already. Her establishment of a company that can aid in dissemination of personal medical records properly by the owner to the proper agency more expeditiously, with lower cost and far greater security is a tremendous advancement for an industry that is struggling with massive problems and huge, often totally unnecessary, expenses as well as the absolute essential requirement of keeping safe intimate personal facts. As one of the very few women of color in such an elevated position, she seeks to provide a framework for, and instruct others how to proceed to enter the ranks of successful entrepreneurs. After the usual disclaimer, dedication and introduction, the Table of Contents lists numerous chapter headings with explanatory sub-headings widely ranging from a most helpful explanation of blockchain and its many advantages as well as of Cryptocurrency and how they function; through Minority and Mindset; need for flexibility in all thinking and activity especially when seeking financial empowerment; and a host of other pertinent subjects with much biographical and autobiographical material that should serve well as instructive to the individuals she is urging to attempt to pursue an entrepreneurial path.
Discussion: There is a considerable amount of repetition in this book. However, because presentation of this and similar material no doubt serves as basic for lectures, it is not unusual. Thus, this presentation is highly recommended for the author’s target audience and parenthetically the quite clearly set forth explanations of blockchain and cryptocurrency can be most enlightening for all individuals so frequently being introduced today to these and other technological terms.
5* Excellent for target audience; highly informative for all readers.