Blockchain technology, which started the foundation of Bitcoin as an alternative to the traditional financial system, has great potential that has made it more than just an underlying technology. Blockchain is now a technology with enormous disruptive power capable of transforming every sector of our society.
Applications of technology blockchain, although it is a technology still in development, there are countless. To date, this technology is present in various sectors of society, ranging from the financial sector, for which it was initially created, to the health, education, food, supply chain, identity management sectors and more.
Blockchain is even gaining ground in insurance and insurance policy markets, in agriculture, and even in the demanding fashion industry. As we can see, it is a technology whose potential allows companies and businesses from different sectors to meet their objectives and goals in a precise, transparent, secure and innovative way.
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Applications of blockchain technology in society
Blockchain technology is still in its infancy, and its enormous potential is only just being discovered with applications and uses that are gaining ground within society every day.
Financial sector, the cradle of blockchain
Initially, and to date, the sector that has most explored the potential of blockchain is the financial sector. Since the creation of BitcoinThis technology has allowed us to understand and realize the importance of a fair and transparent system, where each transaction and financial movement is recorded in an immutable and reliable manner. For this reason, many banking and financial entities are adopting this potential and applying it within their processes in order to improve and optimize their services, to raise them to a new level.
In Spain, BBVA BBVA has been one of the country's leading banks to adopt and develop this technology. BBVA already has numerous forays into blockchain, as part of its path to fulfill the promise of digital transformation, and allow banking operations to be carried out more quickly and safely, eliminating intermediaries and optimizing their management.
For example, this banking entity has unido Turkey's blockchain-based BiGA Asset Transformation Platform; is actively involved in developing a interbank platform driven by Iberpay, together with other important Spanish entities; and even has a blockchain platform to manage corporate loans, which was awarded the “The Banker Tech Awards” in September 2019.
Although this is just a small sample of the revolution that blockchain is causing within the financial and banking system, we can appreciate its transformative potential to make this sector accessible to all, improving the user experience and guaranteeing a high level of trust, transparency and security in the management of data and assets.
Blockchain, a potential ally for health
In recent months, blockchain has been one of the main players in this sector. From applications designed to effectively and efficiently manage a patient's medical history, to applications that help track, monitor and treat infected people, or those who may be potential transmitters of COVID-19, such as health passports.
Within the health sector, blockchain technology has proven to be a great ally to combat the situation caused by the pandemic, thanks to its immutability and distributed capacity, which allows the efficient management of clinical data, without risks of identity theft and other complex situations. Thanks to blockchain, it is now possible to carry out so-called “Telemedicine”, where doctors can virtually care for thousands of patients isolated by the coronavirus, safely and without the risk of private data being manipulated.
Some examples of the implementation of blockchain in the health sector are: the initiative of the Canary Islands, together with the World Tourism Organization, to implement a health passport blockchain based; Healthchain, a platform developed on IBM Cloud to connect patient information from hospitals, clinics and laboratories throughout Latin America, to accelerate medical care and diagnoses.
Blockchain potential in the pharmaceutical industry
One of the main and most appreciated advantages of blockchain technology in the pharmaceutical industry is its potential to mitigate the risk of counterfeit products. It also reduces inefficiency in the sector by eliminating the need for middlemen and ensuring transparent and accurate handling of medical products.
For example, the government of Afghanistan is incorporating blockchain technology into its system Fantom, which guarantees the distribution of legitimate medicines in society, eliminating the counterfeiting of medicines, which is one of the most serious problems and causes the greatest number of deaths in this country.
Blockchain technology also enables better management of studies, research and clinical trials for the production of new medicines, which translates into a reduction in the cost of manufacturing new products.
Quality and safety in food production
Recently, Bayer, one of the world's pharmaceutical giants, announced that it is implementing a blockchain-based network EthereumCalled TraceHarvest and developed by BlockApps, which allows agricultural crops to be tracked at all stages to ensure product quality. According to Bayer's press release, blockchain technology provides transparency, compliance and supply chain management to ensure quality, safety and sustainability in crop production.
Highly efficient and transparent supply chains
The characteristics of blockchain technology allow for irreversible and immutable data records, making it an ideal technology for optimizing supply chains in different sectors.
Through this technology, shipments of raw materials or finished products can be tracked securely, transparently and in real time, using a single system that can be accessed by multiple participants to verify the origin, status and destination of the products. A digital platform based on this technology has the potential to document all product delivery processes; planning and tracking from origin to destination, and identifying risks and problems that may arise during transport.
In the month of August, the multinational Coca-Cola announced the integration of a blockchain platform to ensure transparency in its supply chain, which covers everything from the origin to the distribution of its products.
A fundamental role in the insurance market
Blockchain technology is coming to the insurance and coverage policy market to break with the levels of bureaucracy and inefficiency that have existed in this sector for years.
Markets and Markets, a company dedicated to offering exclusive information on high-growth markets in the world, published a report where it reveals that blockchain technology applied to the insurance market is a sector that will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 84,9% by 2023, and that it will reach a value of more than 1.393 million for that year. The company assures that this potential growth is due to the emerging need for highly transparent and reliable insurance systems, since there is a worrying increase in fraud in this sector, related to claims by clients and consumers and to the inefficient response level of insurers when determining incidents and processing claims.
An example of the implementation of blockchain within this industry is the recent alianza de chainlink with the insurance company on blockchain Etherisc and the insurer ACRE Africa, which seeks to develop a microinsurance platform to protect 250 agricultural producers in East Africa from climate change, which could affect their crops.
Other applications of blockchain technology
As we mentioned initially, blockchain is present in almost all industries. For example, the well-known watch brand Hublot is implementing blockchain to guarantee the authenticity of its watches, as well as ensuring the traceability of its products.
Likewise, Nike, the multinational sports footwear and equipment company, is also implementing blockchain to tokenize its sports shoes with exclusive and collectible designs on the Ethereum blockchain, in the best style of CryptoKitties and their digital kittens. Nike patented its system dubbed as CryptoKicks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
This technology also has applications in the world of fashion, music and digital content, to ensure authenticity and protect copyright of designers and content creators. In addition, it is also present in the design of systems of Sovereign Digital Identity which allow users to have and manage a single access key for different platforms, such as banks, social security, the Treasury, social networks, among others; a single key that is managed only by the owner from a blockchain network, guaranteeing the privacy and security of the data.
The engine of the transformation of society
Contact Center Hub, the content platform specialized in the Customer Service and Technology sector, ensures that blockchain “It has become the Truth Machine, and the driving force of the transformation towards a new Information Society”The platform argues that in today's era, users and businesses require more agile, autonomous, efficient and inclusive actions and solutions, as well as technologies that provide a higher level of trust, and that all of this is what blockchain offers, thanks to its incredible features of immutability, distribution, transparency, scalability, robustness and security.
As we can see, the usefulness and potential of this technology is unimaginable, and we are just discovering some of its many applications.
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