Developed as a secure, decentralized way to exchange cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, blockchain has grown to be a technology that has the potential to disrupt industries. It often gets a ringing endorsement from most tech experts and gets a lot of people across various industries excited about its potential uses. Method Shop defines blockchain by saying this “In a digital world where anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, start a fake news site or alter a photo, the blockchain could be a new technology to help us collectively trust what happens online.

The blockchain enables the digital recording of information in a distributed and encrypted list of record entries, called blocks, which are securely linked using cryptography. The decentralized storage of blockchain data is located across a network of user computers called nodes. No one owns or controls the data. There is no government or bank in control of the blockchain…The applications for blockchain technology is almost limitless. Any industry or organization that needs to log compatible and tamper-proof transactions can benefit from the blockchain.”

What are the most promising applications of blockchain technology?

The top applications of blockchain technology

1. Healthcare

Most people see several doctors, especially as they age. From specialists to mental health providers to primary care physicians, a person’s healthcare records can be disorganized due to no fault of their own. Blockchain has the capacity to streamline medical record-keeping while ensuring security and privacy, allow healthcare teams the best access to the same information and allow all parties to work from the same page. Additionally, blockchain could help solve counterfeit drug problems. Even the most respectable hospitals and pharmacies are at risk to distribute counterfeit drugs to their patients. Blockchain ledger technology can help to trace and verify a medications entire journey from the manufacturer to the wholesaler onto the pharmacists and physicians.

2. Logistics and supply chain management

Blockchain records are permanent and unalterable, making them a great fit for supply chains as a method for customers and businesses to be able to track and verify a product’s source of origin. Walmart has adopted IBM’s blockchain technology to track meat sales in China. Blockchain records show where the meat originated, how it was processed and stored when it was sold, and to what distributors. This is incredibly useful in cutting down on illness and death from contaminated food, as well as helping businesses locate anything effected by a recall and handle it more efficiently.

3. Transportation

Relatedly, blockchain has been referred to as “CARFAX on steroids” for the transportation industry. It helps to streamline freight transactions by increasing visibility, security, and data accuracy. Blockchain has the potential to work as an enhanced form of tracking for businesses who enable or work with transportation.

4. Voting and government

A digital form of voting would revolutionize people’s ability to participate in politics. No longer would be people who are eligible to vote to be left out of the process due to inflexible work schedules, being homebound or ill, or not having a convenient polling location. Blockchain could help create a secure system of digital voting that would enable more political participation and reduce the risk of voter fraud. Blockchain would handle votes like transactions to help log votes as real and also to verify that voters are legally able to and registered to vote. Blockchain would empower people to vote and disrupt and equalize the modern political process

5. Contracts

Blockchain is part of the long-growing trends towards paperless documentation that is both more organized and more earth-friendly. Contracts are part of this – blockchain contracts are just like traditional contracts but without the 3rd-party need for monitoring and legalization. This is helpful in a number of places, including employee-employer relationships and even real estate transactions.

6. Digital IDs

Right now, identification varies from country to country and even from state to state. Blockchain technology may be able to offer a solution to universal identification that would break down barriers to citizenship, employment, and more. It would also help empower the 1 billion people who are currently living without any formal kind of identification. More than 1 billion people worldwide don’t have any identity. Having an ID is crucial to being able to participate in many workplaces, apply for loans, secure housing and more, and blockchain-enabled digital IDs would not only help create inalterable, fraud-free forms of ID, it would also help empower refugees and other high-risk groups and allow them more access to services and more mobility in their lives.

Blockchain is important to businesses

One industry leader noted, “Whenever there is a physical movement and a financial transaction that occurs with that physical movement, it is right for blockchain.” Blockchain technology gives industries the possibility of more security, more transparency, and more understanding. It can serve as a way to enhance business processes that already exist and help create better visibility into those processes. Your better business is waiting with blockchain.