Читать книгу Digital Marketing - Annmarie Hanlon - Страница 45

One technological innovation generated through the development of Bitcoin was blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT). A blockchain is a distributed database so no one person or organisation stores all the data, it is securely shared over several systems, records all actions and is open for verification (Workie and Jain, 2017).

Blockchain was initially aimed at securely recording all Bitcoin transactions but its usefulness on a wider scale for ‘interorganizational cooperation’ was realised (Gupta, 2017, p. 3). There are experiments taking place at the moment to see how this type of disintermediation (see Key Term) can work. The benefits of the DLT are:

 One single person does not control all the data

 Data sets are portable

 Records are transparent

 Greater data integrity as records cannot be changed later

 More efficient system

There are opportunities to use blockchain technology for:

 Medical records: Every specialist, every appointment, diagnosis, treatment and prescription history could be viewed in one place. The doctor has the key; so too does the patient and can share where needed.

 Education and training data: All results, certificates, accreditations, memberships and awards are in one place. The individual has the key and can share with potential employers before interviews.

 Property records: A property passport could be established that lists all safety checks, mortgages attached to the property, equipment installed (and removed), planning permissions and ownership. The current owner has the encrypted digital key that is handed to new owners when needed.

As a company, Blockchain is promoting itself as ‘the world's leading software platform for digital assets’ and has secured funding from major investors including Google's Venture Capital company Lakestar and Sir Richard Branson (Blockchain, 2017, p. 1).

There are drawbacks to blockchain technology too: supercomputers use a lot of energy; some say as much as a small country! The database keeps growing and it is getting slower; if you make a mistake, it is there forever and can't be changed. Once content is added, it can't be corrected – whilst that has advantages, it is also a disadvantage. It is also complicated and will take time to be used routinely by many major companies.