Earlier this month, following a six months of exploratory research into Blockchain technology, Philips has established a blockchain lab.
In the new lab located in the Philips headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, innovative cryptographic technology will be researched to explore the potential of “shared transaction database”, also known as blockchain
IT experts, healthcare professionals, partners and blockchain developers will work together on research and exploration of potential use cases.
Blockchain is an open-source technology that maintains data as a shared record distributed over many computers of people that do not know each other where the entire network of combined computers is responsible for the integrity of the data and needs to approve changes made to that data.
Already a disruptive trend in the financial sector, Bitcoin Blockchain use cryptographic hash functions to ensure the integrity of the Digital Signature, the electronic analog of a physical signature.
“As a company committed to innovation you need to constantly explore new and emerging technologies and their application in areas where they might have an impact and added value. Our aim is to learn if blockchain technology could potentially add value to the process of data exchange in the healthcare industry”, CoinDesk quoted Arno Laeven, initiator and head of the Philips Blockchain Lab.
Whether the use cases and business applications researched within this lab space will be practical and scalable in a real-world environment will be certainly in the news in the following months.
Are you aware of other sectors where blockchain technologies are currently being researched?
