A blockchain based medical devices company attempting to disrupt a $200 Billion industry!
Today I decided to post my first review of a specific crypto currency project. I plan to regularly review projects that I find interesting to supplement some of the other more basic investment education material that I produce.
I am going to start with what I believe to be one of the most interesting projects currently in the crypto space. It is also one of the projects that I am most passionate about personally. I need to emphasise that this investment is highly speculative. The total market capitalisation of this coin is only $1 million - $2 million. It is incredibly thinly traded, and it is very important for anyone who chooses to invest to be very careful when entering this investment. I also need to emphasise that what follows is not investment advice. Whilst I personally own AHT tokens, they comprise less than 2% of my total crypto portfolio. So even though I believe that this project has the potential to be very successful, the risks involved are extreme, even by crypto standards. I have chosen to invest as I feel that the potential rewards outweigh the risks, however it will be up to each individual to make up their own mind whether they feel that this investment is suitable for their personal needs and circumstances.
The Bowhead project is incredibly ambitious. It is also incredibly complex, with multiple moving parts all adding value at different stages of the process. I will attempt to simplify the project as best I can to keep this blog user-friendly. I will also provide links to additional resources at the end should you be interested in doing your own further research.
The team’s primary aim is to produce a system that will allow individuals to better manage and thus improve their own personal health. As a flow on from these efforts, they have devised a system to compile a decentralised database of each individual’s health data. This data base potentially has immense value, as I will demonstrate later in this post.
The CEO of the project is Dr Rhea Mehta, who has a PhD in molecular toxicology. The problem that Rhea and her team is attempting to solve is this. Each individual has their own biochemistry and physical make up, and as a result each individual responds differently when medicines and supplements are administered. I will use the simple example of a multi-vitamin supplement to demonstrate. You and I could both take the same supplement, yet due to our individual biological make up we could achieve very different results from this supplement. My body may metabolise a certain vitamin very efficiently and a particular supplement may be sufficient to meet my needs, whereas if you were to take the same supplement, your body will metabolise it differently and you may still be deficient. In an age when just about everybody in the developed world is popping supplements almost daily, the fact that we have almost no way to measure the effectiveness of this supplements is a significant gap in consumer knowledge. The project aims to provide a system whereby an individual can test themselves to determine the effectiveness of any supplement or medication that they are taking, and make changes to their lifestyle accordingly.
The following video outlines the key elements of the project:
At their heart, the basis of many crypto projects is about allowing individuals to control their own data. Examples of corporations such as Facebook and Google who collect enormous amounts of data on individuals and then commercialise that data at significant profit is often used as an example of how centralisation takes control away from the individual. One of the great potentials of the block chain is to allow individuals to regain control of their own data and to directly benefit from the commercialisation of this information, rather than having the economic benefits accrue to a large multinational corporation. Advertising is one area where this concept is being actively explored with numerous tokens on the market looking to change the way in which users interact with advertising on the Internet. The Bowhead project takes the same approach to medical data. While there are many aspects of this business, the heart of the block chain aspect is allowing individuals to control their own medical data and have the ability to release this data or not, at their own discretion. Bowhead attempts to provide an avenue for those individuals who wish to make their data available to do so and be paid for it.
We are in a stage where large-scale incumbent healthcare providers, hospitals, technology firms and pharmaceutical companies are competing to control patients’ data in a centralized system for their own benefit. Naturally, this reduces the portability of data for patients and further entrenches the incumbents and solidifies their grip on patient data. Bowhead envisions a decentralized Blockchain-based
health data repository controlled by the patient to ensure optimal
security, portability and personal benefits.
Bowhead Whitepaper
What does this mean in layman’s terms. Bowhead will allow users to store their own personal health records on the block chain and then sell that information to third parties for medical research or other purposes:
The commercial potential of this data cannot be ignored. The White Paper provides examples of large purchases of consumer health data by pharmaceutical companies and other industry players. The figures run into the billions of dollars per annum and the market is growing rapidly. If Bowhead is able to capture even a relatively small segment of this market, then the profit opportunity is huge.
Essentially Bowhead creates a system where an individual can store their medical data securely on the block chain and then on sell this data should they wish to commercial organisations such as pharmaceutical companies and researchers. The individual will be paid in AHT tokens should they choose to sell the data. The company proposes to pay 70% of the proceeds of the data sale to the individual whose data is sold and 30% to holders of AHT.
To use a simple example, assume that the project is successful, and Bowhead is able to amass a sufficient amount of data to make their records commercially attractive to medical researchers. If a particular research organisation wishes to access certain data on Caucasian women aged between 30 and 60, they could approach Bowhead who would then provide users of the Bowhead project with the option to participate in this data sale. If the sale were to go ahead and Bowhead were to receive $10 million in proceeds for this information, then $7 million of those proceeds would be divided between the individuals who participated in the sale and $3 million would be distributed to holders of AHT tokens in the form of a dividend style payment. Bowhead users will also be able to earn Bowhead tokens in other ways, as shown in the video embedded above.
I see the potential for this project to be enormous. If Bowhead is able to achieve sufficient market penetration with its mobile app (the device which collates and records the data) then the potential ways in which this application could be used almost limitless. From the very simple and generic example used above right through to very specific examples where researchers engage Bowhead to monitor clinical trials and efficiently collect information on their behalf. Gone will be the days where individual research companies will need to pay poor college students to participate in drug tests and other clinical trials. These businesses will simply be able to engage Bowhead to act as an intermediary to do all of this data collection on their behalf, thus potentially reducing the time and cost to conduct these clinical trials. Another potential application is in the fitness industry. Fitness supplements alone are an $8.8 billion per year global market. At the moment, it is very difficult for athletes to track the effectiveness of the multitude of supplements that they take before, during and after their workouts. Bowhead health solves this problem and allows each individual to tailor their supplement regime to their own needs.
Who is behind Bowhead?
For me the most compelling aspect of this project is the team behind. Some of the key personalities include the following:
Dr. Rhea Mehta, Chief Executive Officer - Strangely the CEO is perhaps the least well credentialed of the team in terms of her previous achievements (not that I’m trying to downplay the completion of a PhD in molecular toxicology). However when you listen to Rhea, you cannot help but be impressed by her passion for the project and get the impression that she is one of the key driving forces in pushing this business.
Dr. Francisco Diaz-Mitoma, Chairman - Francisco is a certified physician and the co-founder of a NASDAQ listed biotechnology company with a current market capitalisation of approximately $300 million. He is clearly an individual who understands the commercialisation of biotechnology projects and has had significant success in this area in the past.
Francisco Diaz-Mitoma Jr., Head of Product - Francisco is a software architect with over 15 years of experience building scalable online technology products. Francisco is the cofounder of Playsino and Revenue.com. Francisco was honored as a Forbes 30 under 30.
Dr. Marek Laskowski, Blockchain Researcher -Dr. Laskowski is the co-founder of the Blockchain Research Lab and a Professor at York University.
David Bueno, Manufacturing - David is Bowhead's first investor and currently COO of Grupo Arcoiris, a 600 person strong FDA-approved facility. The ability to manufacture FDA approved medical instruments is central to the success of this project so having an existing FDA approved facility as part of the team is a key factor increases the chance of success for Bowhead
Joy Wang, Business Development- Joy previously worked at Glaxo Smith Kline Consumer Healthcare and founded Sho Nutrition. Networking with large pharmaceutical organisations will also be key to the success of this project to having an experienced business development manager on board is also very important.
Advisors
The list of advisors is almost as impressive as the actual team itself and includes Raja Jindal, an individual with significant experience in the implementation of individual health tests. Another adviser is Peter Kroll, who was founder of bitaddress.org and a crypto security expert. When dealing with personal health data, including the results of genetic testing, the security of this data is essential to giving individual confidence that their data will remain secure.
Competitors
The White Paper and some of the other reviews that I will link to this article go into significant detail about potential competitors for Bowhead. A summary of this information however is that there is no one else in the marketplace currently attempting to do what Bowhead is doing.
Investment case
The Bowhead project is extremely complex and ambitious. In order to be successful the company must manufacture and sell a sufficient number of medical diagnostic devices to be able to gather sufficient data to make their project commercially viable. Large pharmaceutical organisations and research institutes will not be interested in dealing with Bowhead unless Bowhead has a sufficient database of information to be of use. It must also be noted that the ICO tanked and raised a fraction of what the company had hoped. That said, Bowhead has assembled a very impressive team of individuals, with experience in all areas of the supply chain. They have produced a working prototype and will release an updated version of this prototype in January 2018. They are also establishing relationships with key players, including FDA approved manufacturing facilities and existing individual medical test manufacturers. Longer term Bowhead hopes to produce its own patent protected individual medical tests. In the interim they will use off-the-shelf proprietary tests so that the project can proceed while their own intellectual property is being developed.
This project is not for the fainthearted and is also not a project that is likely to see significant success in the short term. For those who believe in the business case, and are willing to hold the token longer term I think the potential financial rewards for success make an investment in this project compelling. I must emphasise again that Bowhead is extremely speculative, even by the standards of the crypto currency world and I personally have only allocated a very small amount of capital to investing in Bowhead tokens.
Additional Resources
The is a long and detailed interview with Rhea Mehta and Francisco Diaz-Mitoma Jr discussing all aspects of the Bowhead Project
An ICO review of the initial Bowhead ICO.
A second ICO review.
Written with StackEdit.