Leading Blockchain Healthcare Companies Enter Exclusive Partnership To Ethically Share Biobank Data

Blockchain Healthcare Startup Led By Harvard Genomics Pioneer George Church Enters Exclusive Partnership with Leading Blockchain Healthcare Company

An exclusive collaboration has been announced between Nebula Genomics, a San Francisco-based company co-founded by genomics pioneer George Church that is using blockchain to build a marketplace for genomic and clinical data, and Longenesis, a Hong Kong-based partnership between Insilico Medicine and the Bitfury Group that is applying deep learning and blockchain technologies to make a platform for the exchange of healthcare data.

“By allowing individuals and large data providers such as biobanks to maintain ownership of their genomic data on our platform and profit from it, Nebula Genomics seeks to incentivize generation of genomic data. In doing so, we will gather the data on a single network where it can be conveniently and securely accessed by researchers. In other words, we will make a marketplace that will create an equitable and efficient economy for genomic data. Longenesis has built a similar platform that instead focuses on longitudinal health data, so our platforms complement one another very well,” said Dr. George Church, co-founder of Nebula Genomics.

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Nebula Genomics, Longenesis, Bitfury and Insilico Medicine aim to create platforms that utilize blockchain technology to facilitate a more efficient and equitable market for the exchange of life data. Nebula Genomics, co-founded by Harvard Medical School professor and genomics pioneer Dr. George Church along with Harvard researchers Kamal Obbad and Dennis Grishin, is building a platform that allows individuals to have their genomes sequenced and opt to provide them to data buyers directly through a secure blockchain-based network. The platform will eventually support other types of clinical data as well.

Longenesis is a partnership between Insilico Medicine, a leading artificial intelligence company that uses deep learning for drug discovery, and the Bitfury Group, a leading full-service blockchain technology company. It is developing a platform that uses AI-integrated toolsets to store and exchange healthcare-related data such as lab test results, and has already launched the platform in alpha and piloted it for over a year.

“Nebula Genomics and Longenesis share the ultimate goal of making an equitable marketplace for healthcare-related data. By working together, our shared vision of democratizing access to health data will come closer to reality. Longenesis’ founding team consists of leaders in data-driven drug discovery and blockchain. They have uniquely valuable experience and insight in the field of applying blockchain to healthcare and have had an operational network for over a year. For these reasons, we are pleased to announce an exclusive partnership between Nebula and Longenesis through which we will merge the Longenesis platform into the Nebula platform and work with the Longenesis team on further developing the network. With the combined expertise of our teams, we hope to solve the issues preventing efficient and equitable access to healthcare data,” said Kamal Obbad, CEO and co-founder of Nebula Genomics.

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The two companies have agreed to an exclusive partnership through which the Longenesis platform will be incorporated into the Nebula platform. The Longenesis developer team will assist with this development and with the continued development of the Nebula platform, with the goal of building a platform that can integrate a wide range of life data and facilitate its use by researchers.

“Recent advances in science and technology already allow us to transform human life data such as blood tests and genomic data into life-saving products and services. Hence life data can help extend productive longevity, improve productivity, reduce healthcare costs and contribute to economic growth. We recently proposed a model for assessing the relative value of the human life data with the multiple factors affecting the price of a data set looking at combination-, time-, timing-, relationship-value of data and a variety of value multipliers linked to the clinical outcomes. We aim to work with the brilliant Harvard team to develop the new field of microdataeconomics – the study of the value of data for drug discovery purposes and macrodataeconomics – the study of the value of data for preventive and curative personalized medicine”, said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, CEO of Insilico Medicine and the CSO of Longenesis.

“We are very happy to join forces with the Nebula Genomics team to unlock the value of data in many new and previously unimaginable ways. Today, the data is being valued for its utility to generate sales revenue or using the cost to generate the data as a base. But in the context of healthcare and preventative medicine the value of the data and the way we collect and combine it will be dramatically different. This joint effort is likely to contribute to the global economic growth”, said Garry Zmudze, the co-founder and managing director of Longenesis.