Today, Kontakt.io, the IoT (Internet of Things) location provider announced a collaboration with the IOTA Foundation, a non-profit open-source foundation behind IOTA, to integrate IOTA’s next-generation distributed ledger technology with Kontakt’s location platform. The integration will enable tamper-proof and chargeable readings of smart sensor data. This will equip healthcare operators and supply chain firms which monitor environmental conditions for compliance reasons with fully transparent ways of storing and reporting on telemetry data.
For all healthcare operators and logistics companies, monitoring temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors are becoming increasingly important for risk management, compliance, and ensuring a high quality of goods and services. Existing condition monitoring solutions require that data stored in sensors is either collected manually or relayed to the cloud. In both cases, it is possible and often easy to manipulate records, raising questions about security and reliability.
By leveraging mechanisms of Distributed Ledger Technology, the Kontakt.io and IOTA solution is going to ensure that device-to-device and device-to-cloud communication of telemetry streams are encrypted and the data itself is unalterable. Manufacturers, carriers, inspectors, technology providers, and consumers alike will benefit from this technology. It will increase trust and transparency, ease dispute resolution, result in better compliance breach detection, and consequently prevent faulty products from being delivered to consumers.
“IoT and blockchain technologies naturally go hand in hand because they have a lot in common. Both are decentralized, their markets are in early stages, and a limited number of players showcased successful applications. We are starting our blockchain initiative with IOTA to speed up adaptation and innovation in both spaces.”
Numerous publications have covered potential advantages of combining blockchain and Internet of Things technologies but there have not been many large-scale deployments to back up the theory.
“Up until now, we have not heard about successful blockchain applications in IoT because of the amount of computing needed to execute a transaction. In IoT, where a transaction involves tiny bits of data transferred by small battery-powered devices, blockchain has been too expensive and energy-consuming to succeed. We have decided to work with IOTA because it removes the cost barrier, and it needs little computing power to confirm transactions. Moreover, IOTA, unlike blockchain or Ethereum, is capable of processing a lot of operations in almost real time. In fact, the more transactions it has queued, the faster it scales. For all these reasons, IOTA makes Proof of Work possible and efficient in the IoT environment and is likely to become the next security standard for IoT.”
Together with sensor-equipped tags and the IoT application platform, the IOTA module will become part of Kontakt.io’s turnkey offering for healthcare and supply chain. Kontakt.io has already developed a working prototype of this solution and has scheduled first commercial rollouts later this year. The next goal is to offer IOTA beacons in prototyping kits.
“The IOTA Tangle and its lightweight architecture is specifically designed to support smart devices and become the integrity layer for the IoT. We are looking forward to collaborating with Kontakt.io and to empower the building blocks for a smarter supply chain using their powerful IoT platform. With this partnership, we also have the potential to ensure delivery of trusted and non-damaged medicine to patients by providing the needed supply chain visibility. This is a very meaningful and important endeavor.”