As the technology evolves, corporations around the world are working to find the best ways to apply it in a variety of ways. Cointelegraph journalists explored three areas of successful blockchain integration and interviewed representatives from companies that have incorporated crypto-market innovation into their business models.

Health care on the blockchain

The security of medical records has long fallen predominantly on the shoulders of clinics and other healthcare organisations. The storage of this information is also a vulnerability in patient care. In Argentina, for example, a database containing sensitive information was hacked in 2020. As a result, the passports and tax identification numbers of more than 115,000 people who went to the hospital because of COVID-19 were made publicly available.

The incident inspired the ShelterZoom startup team to develop a solution to protect patients’ medical data from similar hacks in the future. The company created the software and partnered with a private clinic to give patients full ownership and control over their data. Here’s how ShelterZoom CEO Chao Cheng-Shorland comments.

Every patient record is tokenised, meaning patients’ cards are attached with their own unique private key.

ShelterZoom

Users can access their medical records through an extension or mobile app. Patients can also quickly contact their doctor if needed. The expert continues.

By moving record-keeping to blockchain, healthcare staff and patients can access medical records instantly, rather than waiting for documents to be delivered or sent to their destination.

More than 300,000 patients currently have access to the ShelterZoom app. The startup team also has plans to expand its services to other medical facilities in Argentina.


It should be noted that Vitalik Buterin suggested using blockchain to improve healthcare in his description of the concept of so-called Soulbound tokens. The term is borrowed from the game World of Warcraft, which itself means "soulbound".

Here we are talking about tokens that will be permanently assigned to a particular address. That is, unlike NFTs or conventional cryptocurrencies, you can't send them to someone else. Most importantly, these tokens will gradually accumulate the experience and knowledge of their owner, reflecting it in a decentralised way. That is, if a person gets a job somewhere and works at their job, the data about that will end up in their token. The same goes for the medical history, which will be instantly available to the right person after the owner's permission.


In the end it will come down to people being responsible for their own personal information, rather than entrusting it to medical institutions or anyone else. This would be another step in the development towards a decentralised society and the gradual abandonment of centralised databases with personal information.

Storing information on a blockchain

Another application case follows from this. As we have already noted, user data has now become one of the main commodities of the internet, as the current stage of internet technology development is forcing people to entrust their personal information to centralised platforms like social networking sites. But Web3, blockchain and smart contracts can help users put ownership of their information back in their hands.

That’s what startup Dimo, a decentralised vehicle data protocol that allows users to create auto records that can be easily verified, is doing. Owners can share this information with apps, allowing them to negotiate better insurance rates and vehicle financing. Referrals and participation in the network are rewarded with their own DIMO token.

Blockchain technology

Dimo is invested in by CoinFund, whose investment director Alex Felix commented on the specifics of integrating decentralised technology.

The more blockchain technology is used beyond trading and speculation, the more we expect consumers to understand its value in a broader sense. We want to get to a point where consumers are using things from the crypto world without even thinking about it. Something like that will be possible once the high usability of blockchains is achieved.

Dimo

Felix believes that privacy-focused projects will replace cookies in online advertising. That is, Web3 will allow users to monetise their own information, rather than giving all that revenue to a third party. In fact, that's where it's going right now, thanks to the popularity of NFT and meta-villages.

Blockchain luxury

The Aura Blockchain Consortium is successfully applying blockchain to enable luxury brand customers to verify the authenticity of products. Through a partnership with Aura, for example, Prada allows customers to track recycled gold jewellery and diamonds, ensuring their authenticity and transparency at every stage of production.

Aura Blockchain Consortium

Other members of the consortium include the Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior brands. They offer their customers a diamond certificate through the Aura system, which stores the characteristics, origin and path of each stone. Transparency, especially for diamonds, has long been a problem for the jewellery industry, which seeks to ensure that only ‘conflict-free’ stones are sold. Blockchain has thus become an important innovation for the luxury goods industry as well.


We believe that the listed uses of blockchain underscore the variety of uses of the technology in matters of information use and storage. Clearly, developers will continue to find new uses for the distributed ledger in the future. So it would be worthwhile for people to understand it beforehand.