The potential for block technology to unlock new business use cases is huge. Join this upcoming VB Live event to learn about how the security offered by distributed ledger technologies is transforming businesses from IoT to healthcare and unlocking real ROI in brand new ways.
“I think we’re now just exploring the true opportunity of IoT and how many day-to-day tasks it can handle for us,” says Dawn Barry, co-founder and president of Luna DNA, a community-owned human health database. “The intersection of blockchain and IoT, as I see it, is that where IOT is currently weak is in security and reliability of connections at all times, blockchain is strong.”
Barry points out that blockchain is currently securing the most valuable digital currencies in the world. Its decentralized nature and smart contracts offer powerful new advantages in an IoT ecosystem. Data streaming, security, and more are not crippled by a single point of failure, because you’re leveraging multiple points of connectivity.
“I think such a frictionless, decentralized system has the power to remove information silos and empower consumers to have a greater say in how their data is used and who benefits from it,” she says. “In my mind, the big future goal is to connect blockchain and IoT, to scale security and connectivity, create trust and transparency, and accelerate data exchange and transactions.”
Luna has its eye on IoT as the next step for their database. The company’s aim is to significantly ramp up the amount of data available for scientific research and accelerate new discoveries. Users connect their health data, while the company anonymizes that data by aggregating and organizing it, and makes it available to researchers. Any profit that comes from the sale rolls back to the original research participants. And IoT will be a key component of accelerating the advances in health fueled by this research.
“I predict a world where IOT-facilitated health data collection will occur continuously in the background of our lives,” Barry says. “We can imagine a future where we’re living our lives, seamlessly connected and contributing our life data to research — like nutrition or environmental exposure or physical activity — a future where we’re empowered to donate our digital bodies, so to speak, throughout our lifespan, to scientific research.”
Blockchain can be used to engage the general public as research partners in building a human health database, Barry says. Through blockchain, people can share personal health data, including DNA files, for the benefit of research, with the privacy and security and personal control that blockchain would offer.
She imagines being able to connect wearables and sensor data as part of the monitoring and donation of data, in order to eventually have the human equivalent of predictive analytics and engine checkups, like we do for our cars, so we’re not always just repairing the breakdown, but catching disease before the late stage.
The Luna system is being built to ensure extensibility in a future of wearables, Barry says, and points out that blockchain allows you to create the kind of extremely scalable system that makes that possible as humans continue to become more data-driven and more quantification-oriented — and more interested in connected health devices.
To learn more about the myriad use cases blockchain is unlocking, the potential of a blockchain-powered IoT system and more, don’t miss this VB Live event!
In this VB Live event, you’ll explore:
- What distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain mean for businesses in 2018
- How blockchain for IoT can build trust between people and parties who transact together, reduce costs, and accelerate transactions
- The future of universal architecture and what it means for autonomous products and services
Speakers:
- Jessica Groopman, Analyst, Kaleido Insights
- Bob Kain, CEO, Luna DNA
- Rachel Brownell, Moderator, VentureBeat
