Tim Berners-Lee’s startup firm Inrupt recently revealed the business-targeted side of its privacy platform Solid, said Tech Crunch. The enterprise version of the open-source project is now available for organizations and businesses.
The idea for Solid started with Berners-Lee, who wanted to make users in charge of their own data. The World Wide Web founder asserts that the web should always be free and open.
However, the emergence of tech giants has made the web and user data to advance their interests. By decentralizing the web using Solid, Inrupt seeks to give back control to its users.
The open-source project was developed with the help of the researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Inrupt, a three-year-old startup co-founded by Berners-Lee and CEO John Bruce, was created to “[shift] data ownership without changing the way websites get developed,” as per Tech Crunch.
Solid seeks to implement the same standards and methods while balancing data power with a preference toward users. This service was first released to the public targeted to individuals.
It allows users to control their information by accessing online storage units called Personal Online Data Storage (PODS).
According to Bruce, “We’re releasing the first significant technology as the fruits of our labor, which is an enterprise version of Solid to be deployed at scale by large organizations.” The business version uses the Solid Server to manage the PODS.
It allows developers to create applications through a software development kit (SDK) that helps them benefit from the PODS by getting the data they need to perform tasks. This enterprise model is also entirely useable with Solid’s open-source specifications.
Inrupt has partnered up with the National Health Service in the United Kingdom to explore the potentials of this service. With the National Health Service, patients can control their healthcare-related info using an application.
According to the company, “Patients will be able to permit doctors, family, or at-home caregivers to read certain data from their Solid PODS, and add caretaking notes or observations that doctors can then read in order to improve patient care.”
Compared to the typical app, this service lets users decide who can access what type of info. The application owner, which is the National Health Service in the given example, will need to ask the data owner for permission.
Explicit permission is required, complete with certain conditions and other specifications.
