Blockchain and its potential to transform the Healthcare and Smart Wearable industries
The impact of blockchain on several other areas is just interesting, even though the healthcare industry is the subject of much attention. Businesses in the healthcare industry will undoubtedly flourish and fall over the next few years depending on how well they are able to leverage the transformative potential of the blockchain. Currently, blockchain technology and other innovations are being used to address a number of significant healthcare concerns. It is true that blockchain technology can have a significant positive impact on global health, particularly when it comes to wearable smart gadgets, which are currently in high demand.
Wearable technology includes functional gadgets like digital smartwatches that monitor health and fitness. According to a study by Value Penguin, 45% of millennials in the US use a smartwatch. The more crucial modern technologies in smart wearables are becoming in observing our health, the more we are relying on them for self-management. This reliance on one hand has made all of our sensitive information accessible within just a few clicks, on the other hand it has made our smart wearables more and more vulnerable to hacking.
According to a report by Deloitte, 60% of the smartwatch users are concerned about the privacy of their health data. But what’s making a small piece of one’s health information a soft target for hackers? Where it seems as just a document with one’s medical information, on the other hand it is one of the most sought after records in the black market, to be more precise- 10 to 40 times more valuable than one’s credit card credentials according to Cyber Policy. This is where blockchain technology comes into play and offers shifting all of the sensitive health data to an immutable decentralized ledger which, in addition, will give users full control of their health data that they can share peer to peer with their healthcare providers.
Unfortunately, not many smartwatch companies seem interested in shifting their focus to help users with enhanced health data security, as giving users full control of their health data means the companies will no longer have access to it and they will be unable to share it with third parties- who pay to get access to your health data. Now, why this should concern a smartwatch user like yourself is because not having full control of your health data means your personal and sensitive information might be under the risk of getting in the wrong hands where it could be misused against you.
Before you start to think of it as a helpless situation, Epillo Health Systems, a health-tech conglomerate based out of Europe, has designed the world’s first blockchain based smart wearables range that stores its users’ health data on-chain. FitMint Wear, so far, stands out as the only smart wearables range that leverages blockchain technology to deliver impeccable health data security and is extremely difficult to hack, thanks to NFT Authentication, which is another use case of blockchain technology that Epillo has leveraged in their smartwatch.
NFT Authentication is the process of creating a digital twin of a product and embedding it in a smart label which can be scanned anytime to check the trail of transactions of the product via decentralized immutable ledger. Although the technology behind it may seem complicated, a user must keep in mind that NFT Authentication in a smartwatch ensures its authenticity and keeps the users from using a counterfeit product. As per a report by LiveMint, Xiaomi claimed to seize no less than 9000 counterfeit products in the first half of 2022, worth ₹73.8 lakh. The report clearly states the importance of NFT Authentication in smart wearables since we deeply rely on them to monitor our health.
Bringing the whole world of Blockchain in a smartwatch, Epillo has also introduced Decentralized Finance in FitMint Wear, which comes with an in-built crypto wallet where you can store your digital assets such as cryptocurrency or NFTs. Although the smartwatch is yet to come to the market, its pre-booking is starting soon on all popular e-commerce platforms. In addition to that, the native token of the company- EPILLO Health Token, is getting listed on P2B Crypto Exchange on January 16, post which anybody can trade the token.
In the big picture, the transformative potential of blockchain is no less of a miracle for the healthcare industry, especially the smart wearables segment that a big majority of the population relies on to check their health metrics such as heartbeat, blood oxygen, blood pressure, and much more. Blockchain technology will certainly play a huge role in enhancing the overall security of one’s health data and eliminating counterfeit products from the market. It is merely a matter of time to see when your smartwatch company starts taking your sensitive health data’s security seriously and starts storing it on blockchain.
