User cases

Cryptocurrency expert and CEO of the DS Plus project Mikhail Mikhailov shared his four-dimensional vision of how blockchain technology will change average people’s lives over the next 10 years with Bitcoinist:

• Sales records will be digitized and easily trackable: “What will finally be achieved is digitization in terms of the ownership of cars, apartments, and other things.” According to Mikhailov, It will become possible to track all records of purchase or sale of any item, digitally.
  
  As such, transactions will proceed openly and transparently, without the need for any kind of government regulation. Any private party will be able to determine the legitimacy of a sale without bringing in a third party.
  

• Personal identification will become easy to verify: “There will be created a united blockchain wallet and personal identification device which will replace government issued ID and insurance cards.”  With this device, it will no longer be necessary to carry around keys to open doors or a credit card to pay for daily purchases. Everything will be part of a single apparatus, likely your mobile phone.

• Digital contracts with no third party: “Business procedures will be carried out and verified via smart-contracts.” What’s more, employee salaries and other overhead expenses will be paid in a transparent way. Government audits will be simplified, if not eliminated. There simply won’t be a need for this governmental, third party, interference, in a world with blockchain verification.

• Businesses will begin to open cryptocurrency accounts: Mikhailov believes that in 10 years, more and more businesses will see the utility in having a “crypto-account” as opposed to a traditional bank account – even outside of the tech space.
  
  The traditional bank may soon be obsolete as everything will be viewable on a list online.Uber and Airbnb will have to choose between switching to the blockchain model, thereby becoming transparent, or going out of business.

With the introduction of...continue reading: https://bitcoinist.com/blockchain-tech-startups-to-revolutionize-peoples-lives-by-2027/

There are 26 different electronic medical records systems used in the city of Boston, each with its own language for representing and sharing data. Critical information is often scattered across multiple facilities, and sometimes it isn’t accessible when it is needed most—a situation that plays out every day around the U.S., costing money and sometimes even lives.

But it’s also a problem that looks tailor-made for a blockchain to solve, says John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.Imagine that when a doctor sees a patient or writes a new prescription, the patient agrees to have a reference or “pointer” added to a blockchain—a decentralized digital ledger like the one underlying Bitcoin.

Instead of payments, this blockchain would record critical medical information in a virtually incorruptible cryptographic database, maintained by a network of computers, that is accessible to anyone running the software (see “Why Bitcoin Could Be Much More Than a Currency”).

Every pointer a doctor logs on the blockchain would become part of a patient’s record, no matter which electronic system the doctor was using—so any caregiver could use it without worrying about incompatibility issues, Halamka says.

Technologists and health-care professionals across the globe see blockchain technology as a way to streamline the sharing of medical records in a secure way, protect sensitive data from hackers, and give patients more control over their information.

But before an industry-wide revolution in medical records is possible, a new technical infrastructure—a custom-built “health-care blockchain”—must be constructed.

Emily Vaughn, head of accounts at Gem, a startup that helps companies adopt blockchain technology, says that’s only just starting to be worked out. “There may be specific rules we want to bake into the protocol to make it better for health care,” she says.

The system must facilitate the exchange of complex health information between patients and providers, for example, as well as exchanges between providers, and between providers and payers—all while remaining secure from malicious attacks and complying with privacy regulations.The best way to do all that is still far from clear.

But Halamka and researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a prototype system called MedRec (pdf), using a private blockchain based on Ethereum.

It automatically keeps track of who has permission to view and change a record of medications a person is taking. MedRec also solves a key issue facing just about anyone who wants to take blockchain outside the realm of digital currency: miners.

With Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, miners use computers to perform calculations that verify data on the blockchain—a crucial service that keeps the system functioning. In turn, they’re rewarded with some of that currency (see “What Bitcoin Is and Why It Matters”).

MedRec incentivizes miners—generally medical researchers and health-care professionals—to perform the same work by rewarding them with access to aggregated, anonymized data from patients’ records that can be used for epidemiological studies (as long as patients consent).

But mining in this way is computationally intensive, and the computers that do the work can suck up a lot of energy.

This process may not be necessary in a health-care application, says Andrew Lippman, associate director of the Media Lab and a co-creator of MedRec. Lippman says that subsequent versions of MedRec may try to get rid of Bitcoin-style mining.

The health-care blockchain could rely on the abundant computing resources available in some hospitals to verify the exchange of information, for example.

Either way, blockchain’s potential for the health-care industry depends on whether hospitals, clinics, and other organizations are willing to help create the technical infrastructure required.

Right now, that means prototyping and testing fundamental concepts, says Vaughn. For example, the health-care blockchain will need a way to provide unassailable information about a patient’s identity to anyone who needs it, anywhere.

To that end... continue reading: 
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608821/who-will-build-the-health-care-blockchain/

Blockchain technology has taken many industries by storm, with everyone from financial firms to charities and NGOs jumping on the bandwagon.

The technology, which works to secure data as it passes through many hands, is now slated to change the face of global trade, as shipping giants and key ports have started trialling its capabilities.

First launched in 2009, blockchain gained notoriety as the technology that makes bitcoin transactions possible. In recent years however, it has spread beyond the crypto-currency realm, to become synonymous with an effective, transparent and cyber-secure data sharing platform between companies and individuals.

Naturally, financial institutions were the earliest adopters. Last year, a study by Greenwich Associates reported that the sector was expected to invest $1bn in blockchain initiatives and projects. At the start of this year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced plans to use blockchain to help the two billion people worldwide who lack bank accounts.

When it comes to shipping, the solution has the potential to save the industry billions of dollars, according to IBM and Danish transport and logistics firm Maersk. In June, the two companies announced their partnership to use blockchain technology to help transform the global supply chain.

The solution, expected to go into production later this year, will help manage and track the paper trail of tens of millions of shipping containers across the world, protecting the supply chain from human error, unwanted and wasteful delays, as well as cyber threats.

“We believe that this new supply chain solution will be a transformative technology with the potential to completely disrupt and change the way global trade is done,” said Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president of industry platforms at IBM. “We’ve long understood the challenges facing the supply chain and logistics industry and quickly recognised the opportunity for blockchain to potentially provide massive savings when used broadly across the ocean shipping industry ecosystem.”

Preventing astronomical shipping costs

Today, the vast majority of the transactions in the shipping sector are paper-based. In a study carried out in 2014, Maersk found that just a simple shipment of refrigerated goods from East Africa to Europe goes through nearly 30 people and organisations, including more than 200 different communications among them.

The costs associated with the document processing and administration side of things are estimated by IBM to be up to one-fifth of the actual physical transportation costs. Not only this, but the paperwork can be delayed, misplaced and altered, causing further problems and resulting in mounting costs.

"Blockchain could save $300 per container in terms of labour and processing associated documents."

Blockchain can counteract all of these issues by acting as a permanent and transparent database, mutually accessible to all parties involved, where transactions are recorded in a way that cannot be undone or changed. This makes possible any type of operation, from the exchange of sensitive documents, such as contracts, to the transfer of money.

Marine Transport International estimates that blockchain could save $300 per container in terms of labour and processing associated documents. For one ultra large container ship, which carries up to 18,000 containers, the savings amount to $5.4m.

It can also help with cyber security. In June, Maersk was one of the victims of a global ransomware attack, which caused outages at its computer systems across the world and cost the company $300m in lost profits in the third quarter of this year.

In the wake of the attack, TrustMe managing director Antony Abell argued that blockchain could have prevented the attack from happening. Despite the recent partnership with IBM, Maersk’s blockchain capabilities are not yet fully fledged.

Testing blockchain at sea

The collaboration will see the two giants work within a network of shippers, freight forwarders, ocean carriers, ports and customs authorities to build the new global trade digitisation product, according to the companies.

Their partnership was recently revealed to reach even further, after...continue reading: http://www.ship-technology.com/features/featurecould-blockchain-technology-revolutionise-shipping-59...