Biomine: Research and Health Care on the Blockchain
Imagine a world where research and health care are not controlled by governments and big pharma. A world where data is securely stored on a blockchain, and independent investigators can collaborate to improve our understanding of disease and develop new treatments. Imagine a system where you can take part in cutting-edge research to advance knowledge and help determine which areas to study. Imagine no more: welcome to the biomine where blockchain technology enables you to optimize your health and conquer disease.
Let me highlight some issues with current systems that I struggle to accept -- which is why I currently devote my talents to developing Biomine.
Research is Highly Centralized
To-date, a small number of institutions control the flow of research and access to data. This leads to a lack of transparency, accountability and trust, as well as stagnation in the field.
Government funds are often designed to support low risk research where scientists have to settle for low reward projects. No guarantee of success means no funding, and potentially groundbreaking research is left on the sidelines. This is not an efficient or effective use of resources, and it ultimately means that we as taxpayers are not getting the best return on our investment (which is 41.7bn$ of public money devoted to medical research in the US alone). The current system is designed to stifle innovation and independent researchers are unable to access the data they need.
Big pharma companies, on the other hand, are motivated by profits, not cures. While money is a prime driver behind innovation, companies are not transparent and might suppress research that could lead to treatments that would compete with their existing products, without us ever knowing.
Actionable Insights are Scarce
The data that is available today is scattered across different silos and not easily accessible. This makes it hard to get a comprehensive view of all possible variation. Furthermore, data is often locked away in proprietary databases, making it difficult to share and build upon.
Importantly, the lack of data sharing hampers the development of new methods and tools. For example, it is hard to develop new machine learning algorithms when you don't have enough data to train them on. This means that we are not making the most of the data that is available, and that valuable insights are lost. Unfortunately, only a small amount of all health data is actually being used to inform decision making.
Needs of Individuals are Ignored
Individuals are often unaware of clinical trials that might be relevant to them and have no streamlined way of finding out about them. Furthermore, they have no way of knowing whether their data is being used to generate actionable knowledge that could improve their health, or if it’s just filling up some research papers.
Since scientists are evaluated on the number of their publications, there is a perverse incentive to generate many low-quality data sets instead of fewer, higher quality ones.
All this leaves the current system ineffective at delivering new treatments to people and can't provide personalized suggestions and services.
Fortunately, we can change all of this by integrating healthcare and research on the blockchain.
The Promise of the Biomine
By merging research, health care and the blockchain, we can create an open system that is accessible to everyone. That means anyone can contribute data and everyone has an equal opportunity to access it. In other words, we enable everyone to become a Bioneer. Through mining biological data, Bioneers can mine $BMN (biomine nuggets) and researches can process that data to extract insights (nuggets of knowledge).
Health Monitoring meets the Blockchain
First, we incentivize Bioneers to share their health monitoring data on the blockchain by offering crypto rewards. We have planned out a system that supports sample collection and data generation.
Anonymized data will be stored in a decentralized manner, making it impossible for any single entity to control or manipulate it. At the same time, data will be easily accessible and shareable, fostering collaboration and innovation. However, our blockchain system will allow Bioneers to control their own data and choose which research projects they want to contribute to. This gives them a say in how their data is used and ensures that it is only used for purposes that they approve of.
Importantly, sharing more data will allow for a more complete picture of human health and eventually enable personalized medicine.
Secondly, we endeavour to create a similar reward system for scientists that is based on the quality, not the quantity, of their publications, to promote high-quality, reproducible research. This would create a virtuous circle where more data leads to better research, which in turn leads to more data.
Thirdly, we will establish a DAO to allow Bioneers to vote on new research targets and to keep the system accountable. The DAO will be composed of patients, researchers, and other interested parties who will be able to buy our coin via public trades. This would allow for a more efficient allocation of resources and make sure that the best ideas rise to the top, regardless of who came up with them.
The Biomine will thus fund itself and be able to support a wide range of research projects that would otherwise not be possible.
Last but not least, the biomine will integrate its data sets and derived insights with deep learning models to offer Bioneers a variety of personalized health services.
Stay tuned and learn how we are planning to set up our health monitoring system and use recent progress in metabolomics to advance biomarker research.
If you can't wait for our next blogpost, visit our website at biomine.xyz, reach out to us on Discord or follow us on Twitter.
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We are still looking for talented blockchain devs and health researchers to join our team! Please share and contribute to create a bright future together.