Interview with the Shivom Team
Today, I have interviewed the Shivom team on their ICO and future projects. Shivom is a genomics and precision medicine company that leverages blockchain technology to connect patients, researchers and clinical laboratories to one another. Shivom is listed to organize a token sale in Q2–2018.
1) What problem are you solving, why do you need the blockchain technology and what are the main pillars that define your company and differentiate you from your competitors?
Shivom helps to solve several problems that plague healthcare systems, from inaccessible data siloes, data breaches, healthcare data that is not actionable or difficult to interpret, unclear data ownership, unsustainable healthcare costs, and data portability, among others. For example, healthcare data, when siloed and stored in a variety formats and in disparate databases, is not readily available for society’s maximum utility, benefit and medical needs. Compartmentalized information, especially for genomics data, significantly limits healthcare providers from being able to conduct effective research and drug development. If individuals and medical centres around the world fully shared their genomic data, then the collective data would likely be more profoundly valuable and useful; and healthcare costs would likely significantly decrease.
By making data accessible on a global level, including ethnicities with unusual mutations and phenotypes, would significantly improve clinical trial outcomes and further advance development and adoption of precision medicines. By combining genomic sequencing data with health records, researchers and clinicians will have a vast resource that can be interpreted to improve patient outcomes and be used to investigate the causes and treatments of a disease.
Sharing data has clearly benefits but only as long as the highly sensitive health data is protected from cybercriminals. Obviously, you don’t want to have your genome data or your medical records available for download on the darknet. However, today’s centralized databases continue to allow for multiple points of access and failure as evidenced by routine reports of data hacks and breaches worldwide. The solution is to develop new blockchain-based technology solutions. Such platforms must be accessible on a global scale, offer data provenance and auditing features, be easily accessible and understood by all users and stakeholders, and easily allow for the upload / addition of new genomic data.
In addition to relatively poor security practices and protocols, participants continue to lack sufficient access and control to their own sensitive personal data and electronic healthcare records. Beyond lack of transparency, patients also continue to be discouraged and lack incentives to participate in studies and share data, which is known to be routinely monetized by third parties. Based on these and other persistent healthcare system deficiencies, people worldwide increasingly demand not only new practices, technologies, methodologies, business models and innovative approaches to the drug discovery and therapeutic remedies, but also greater oversight, management and control over their personal data and wellness / healthcare — and this is exactly what Shivom will provide.
So, to tackle the numerous challenges associated with today’s healthcare system, Shivom plans to develop the world’s largest genomics datahub and healthcare services platform on the blockchain. Why the blockchain? Blockchains offer superior security and privacy relative to today’s prevailing centralized solutions. When storing healthcare data in a blockchain, cryptography is used for encrypting the contents of a message or transaction, so that only intended users can open and read its contents. Overall, the blockchain solution provides significant improvement and value over standard centralized databases in multiple areas relevant to Shivom:
• Security — Healthcare data cannot be revised or tampered with
• Disintermediation — No more middlemen that increase costs in healthcare systems
• Privacy — Blockchain helps to keep identities private which makes people more eager to share their valuable data
• Global — Platform operates across borders, opening up a huge worldwide community for Shivom
• Permanent ledger — Everybody has structured, time-stamped data which is especially important in highly regulated environments such as the medical sector
• New Economies — Users can operate everywhere, serving underserved markets such as the transitional countries such as India, Brazil, Turkey, or the Middle East
• Decentralization — No single hacker access point, no central authority
• Smart Contracts — Real-time transactions occur automatically via pre-defined agreements which makes transaction in the Shivom ecosystem fast and cheap
• Accurate Tracking — Consensus mechanisms allow transactions on the Shivom platform to occur error-free
• Digitizes Assets — Makes assets securely available globally.
The token-based incentive schemes enable Shivom not only to introduce novel precision medicine services and products but also an entirely new user-driven ecosystem. There are several companies that occupy a similar space, but none of them is even close in scope and quality compared to Shivom. Dealing with genomic and other health data is a sensitive issue. None of the existing Genomics companies in that genomics ecosystem have a working solution to properly protect privacy of patients and individuals (all use centralized databases); some even exploit their customers by selling their data to third parties. As such, many people do not have confidence about giving out their personal health data online. This means they are less likely to use online services and other technologies. We will change that — providing safety and trust to all users. We will put the will of the data owner (based on fine-grained consent and smart contracts) on top of all processes.
2) What value are you adding to your industry value chain and which are the main obstacles to the success of your solution?
With a blockchain-based platform, Shivom envisions developing a world class and transparent healthcare services platform that is highly secure, auditable and all donors, patients, and stakeholders will trust and be able to rely upon with a high degree of confidence. By integrating various ‘omics’ data with the genomic data stored in Shivom’s blockchain-based ecosystem and by applying latest technologies to include artificial intelligence (AI) technology (e.g. novel deep learning algorithms), Shivom through its healthcare services platform intends to provide deep scientific insights, boost therapeutic development, advance molecular diagnostics, biomarker discovery and disease risks assessment; and ultimately serve to improve people’s quality of life by working to prevent, alleviate and treat thousands of rare diseases worldwide. In the end, Shivom offers access points for almost all stakeholders in various healthcare systems to collaborate and to partner with us, lowering healthcare costs and making precision medicine a reality.
Of course, despite the fact that introducing new technology to our healthcare systems is technically feasible, there are various roadblocks to overcome. One major issue is institutional resistance. Many corporate departments and healthcare providers are not willing to give up control of their systems because it means a loss of power from central authorities to non-hierarchical and peer-to-peer structures. Additionally, most organizations are not prepared for sudden paradigm shifts and are more familiar with incremental or evolutionary change, which is slow and proceeds only in small steps. Fortunately, there are ways to tackle these problems. Removing roadblocks requires effective resistance management, involving the identification of the root causes of resistance. One way is to work with regulators and governments to support all stakeholders in the precision medicine sector in order to truly leverage the potential of technologies for healthcare. That’s why we are working directly with governments that realize that they should promote the safe use of digital health technologies. Luckily, there are already a handful of governments consciously doing this already such as Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Sweden or Estonia which are on the way to an entirely digital healthcare system.
Of course, not everyone is interested in adopting cheaper and more transparent healthcare systems, especially in environments where healthcare is traditionally primarily a business and not a service for the greater good such as in the US. In the end, most stakeholders are still working in or with for-profit companies, and their goal is to maximize their revenue. As a result, every step of the patient or patient data within the system contributes to the expenses; every step becomes a business opportunity and as such the money is lost. There’s no incentive for a health industry that is so profitable to innovate. In the past, consumers had no choice but to buy-in to essential services at incredibly high prices. But with Shivom, this will change, because we are introducing transparency and empower stakeholders, i.e., patients, insurances, and government, who are the ones paying the bills. If transparency is part of the system — and people demand transparency, pressure will grow on stakeholders to provide it.
3) Why did you decide to launch an ICO and why do you need a public Token Sale?
An ICO was the only logical choice for our business model that is heavily driven by cryptoeconomic networks, wellness enthusiasts, patients, and early adopters — it fosters community building. Our platform users are likely to feel more closely connected to us and our services and provides a much larger community the option to be part of Shivom, not just a few selected investors. Since we are building a platform for the greater good, an ICO protects from surrendering a portion of the equity from hostile companies and from outside control, allowing our founders to keep the ball in their own court to revolutionize healthcare. Also, timing is critical; it is the time now to invest in precision medicine to take a global leadership role; this requires liquidity which would be difficult with classical VC’s, where we would not be able to expand the company quickly without holding an initial public offering or selling securities in some other way. Our token sale is important to have a strong community from the start. Increased global adoption, velocity and sustained usage of the OmiX token will serve to significantly drive the utility and long-term value of the Shivom platform. With network effects and increased adoption of the platform, the utility of and demand for the Shivom platform and related products / services and circulation of OmiX should increase exponentially. A fixed-supply combined with immutable ledgers keeping track of transactions on the Shivom platform will be a game changer for a number of applications in the healthcare vertical. Token sales can generate positive network effects vitalising and strengthening decentralized and cross-border applications. Since we are tapping into a massive potential user-base (almost all of the 7.6 billion people on earth) and we focus on incentivizing users on the platform, we are confident to create a significant community that can sustain long-term the operation, security and vitality of our decentralized network.
4) How does your token function within the platform and why is it needed? How did you decide the total supply and distribution among stakeholders?
The OmiX token will be the fuel of the Shivom ecosystem and necessary for all transactions that occur on the platform. Users will use the OmiX token to access and procure healthcare related products and services. For example, user can exchange tokens for obtaining genome sequencing kits, get access to health/fitness apps from 3rd party providers, redeem for health/related products, analyse information on their pharmacogenetic profile, get personalised lifestyle, diet, and nutraceutical advice etc.. Organisations on the other hand can use OmiX tokens to sponsor sequencing projects, access the genome database and analytics services, pay donors for participating in research studies, get storage space for proprietary DNA sequences for tamper-proof IP protection, and so on. All parties on the Shivom platform including individuals, pharmaceutical companies, research organizations, insurance companies, universities, employers, etc. will be required to utilize OmiX tokens to settle any activities and transactions to include the procurement of products and services. Tokens are digital and cannot be counterfeited or reversed arbitrarily by the sender as is the case with credit card charge-backs. Tokens use a “push” mechanism that allows the token holder to send exactly what he or she wants to the healthcare provider with no further information; lowering the chance of identity theft. Also, the strong encryption techniques employed throughout the distributed ledger are a safeguard against fraud and account tampering, and guarantors of consumer privacy. For the token supply we decided to have enough tokens in circulation to support a massive global healthcare ecosystem, forecasting 20 years. Our token distribution needed some carefully research and was designed to primarily build a long-lasting, strong community. That means that a significant amount of the tokens is allocated for the incentivising the healthcare community, secured in a smart contract, allocated to the database, and introduced into circulation as rewards for data generation.
5) Where do you see the value of your token in the medium to long term and the ultimate benefit for the token holders?
As more service providers enter the Shivom ecosystem, the platform scales and community demand are better understood, more services and products will be available to platform users in exchange for OmiX tokens, which will be linked directly to smart contracts, a mechanism that is not easily done by FIAT currencies. Another reason to use tokens instead of FIAT is that transactions are generally orders of magnitude faster (i.e., seconds vs. days) and enables cross-border transactions, which makes it easier targeting other healthcare systems, especially in transitional economies such as India, Brazil, or the Middle East. All those customers will have a wallet with an OmiX balance, which will eventually be reduced by the tokens being used on the platform. To ensure long-term success we carefully worked on a dynamic framework for community building using network analysis and game theory. As such, Shivom will take great effort to provide a variety of opportunities for users to utilize the token balances for a variety of use cases ranging from D2C sequencing services, genomic counselling to donation of tokens for philanthropic purposes.
6) Thinking about the future, what are your plans after ending the ICO? Are you afraid that the volatility of the cryptocurrency market might affect the economy of your project in any way?
In this context, one could also ask: ”Are you afraid that the volatility of the US dollar end the Euro might affect your project?”. For both question our answer would be pretty much the same; we are not too worried about potential volatility of the cryptocurrency because our blockchain platform is self-sustained and is designed to revolutionize the global healthcare system. Beside of that, we are still in the infancy of a global crypto-economy; despite up and downs we are absolutely confident that a new token economy will be a major part of future business verticals.
Thinking about the near-term future, we will heavily invest in our taskforce to get our platform and service offering to the point of public release. We have many potential partners that are eager to partner with us to build a strong global healthcare ecosystem.
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Disclaimer: This interview and the information contained herein is not intended to be a source of investment, financial, technical, tax, or legal advice. This interview cannot substitute for professional advice and independent factual verification.
