Bowhead Health: R&D Announcement
Today, we are excited to share an update with our community, specifically with regard to some of the milestones we have reached from a product perspective.
Remember to join our official Bowhead telegram group for more updates.
In a nutshell we have reached the following product milestones:
- Bowhead Health Account Creation iOS/Android
- Bowhead Health Account Import
- Health data encryption and storage on IPFS
- Successfully decrypting information locally on mobile/desktop (information is never stored or transferred decrypted in the ecosystem)
In order to achieve these Research & Development (R&D) milestones we are using the following tools and frameworks (and are very grateful to the contributors):
- Kotlin for Android Development exploiting Web3JS
- Swifthereum for iOS Development leveraging Web3JS
- Angular for Desktop
- API Development using Node libraries and tools (leveraging the package manager)
Over the next several months we will be updating our Github to reflect our open-source philosophy and share our development with the community to pay it forward as these thoughtful teams above have done.
Although in this announcement we will be focusing mostly on the Bowhead Health software product, we would also like a wholesome update to discuss:
- Recent events
- Hardware device updates
- At-home-testing lab partnerships
- Nutraceutical test shipment
Product Research & Development Update
Over the last few weeks we have made significant advances on the sharing of health data with a prototype using a Bowhead Geth node communicating with a Bowhead instance of IPFS, along with successful decryption/encryption.
Below is a simplified diagram of Bowhead current system functionality. We will be refining and releasing the system over the next several months:
Mobile Bowhead Health Wallet Creation
The Bowhead Health wallet must be secure, simple and beautiful. We currently have working versions of an easy-to-use Bowhead Health wallet for both iOS and Android. The wallet behaves in a similar way to other crypto-wallets, however, it has the ability to securely manage your most personal information — your health data.
Successful Encryption and Decryption using keys and IPFS
We are are also happy to report that we are now able to securely store health data from iOS/Android devices. We are also encrypting and decrypting this information at the client level to ensure the safe transfer of information.
$AHT Crypto-Incentives
As a refresher, at the heart of Bowhead Health is the $AHT token. The $AHT token :
- Rewards users for submitting anonymized health data, in a pseudo-proof of work format
- Is a form of payment from health researchers and clinical trial organizers
- In certain situations can be redeemed for large discounts on products and services provided by Bowhead
- A form of payment from partners who would like to use the Bowhead Network in a SAAS model
From AHT Points to $AHT
We have started piloting the use of AHT Points in our mobile app that rewards users for providing health information. Our intention is to fully depreciate points and use one single currency $AHT to reward users, however, we do require significant testing and mathematical modelling to incentivize users while being conscious of existing token holders.
When we launch our mobile app beta to the public we will be using AHT Points until we are confident that our system and reward model is secure and fair for production.
Complications & Considerations
GAS on the Ethereum network is not currently optimized for microtransactions. Sometimes the GAS needed to reward a user for recording a single health activity (such as taking a Vitamin D test) on IPFS may be more expensive in GAS than the actual reward.
Bowhead Health is more interested in rewarding users for the health data they send to the ecosystem than charging users on a per transaction model. In other words, we hope that a number of users will care to share their anonymized health records and that the network fees relating to the transmission will be nominal to the value created from a massive health data store.
We were planning on having some processes off-chain and once a certain threshold of AHT Points were collected, to transfer them to $AHT on the public Ethereum network. However, this additional step centralizes the core of the rewards system which we hope to have decentralized in a trustless environment. We could also opt to have multiple chains manage this process, but having to manage multiple chains for one token reduces our team’s focus and increases the likelihood of unforeseen issues.
The impact of high GAS fees has led us on to the path of cloning Ethereum with certain modifications to GAS. This obviously implies more development work, however, in the end we believe it will be better for the community. Over the next couple of months we expect to have a fully tested solution that is ready for production.
Our team currently has multiple nodes running and we believe the additional benefits and future-proofing our network far outweighs the short term desire to have a tokenswap from Waves to ERC20.
To our existing $AHT tokenholders: we expect the tokenswap to occur in late Spring.
Events
Eli Lilly
Bowhead Health CEO, Dr. Rhea Mehta, presented our vision at an Eli Lilly Event. We are very grateful we had the chance to meet with their data buying team to learn about the types of data researchers deem valuable.
Eli Lilly is in over 125 Countries, learn more about them at lilly.com
Life Sciences Ontario
Mid-February we presented during a breakfast organized by Life Sciences Ontario in Toronto. We are very grateful for the government of Ontario and Canada for sponsoring entrepreneurship and advances in health technology.
IEEE.ORG
A couple days before that our team was in Orlando, Florida at the Blockchain for Clinical Trials Forum organized by IEEE.ORG — the world’s largest technical professional association — where we had the opportunity to meet the head of the FDA.
Consumer Electronics Show 2018
In early January, as we recently posted, we were at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Below you will find a short clip:
Hardware Update
We are happy to announce that we have managed to reduce the size of the Bowhead device by nearly 60% without compromising any dispensing functionality while adding a modular approach for future enhancements. As an example, these future enhancements can include additional optics systems and mining docking stations.
The only piece we are still testing and refining is a scooping part which controls the outflow of pills from the cartridges into the counter. We initially planned to only allow a set size of 10mm spherical gel caps, however, we are refining the design of the scooping piece to allow for a variety of sizes while still maintaining a precise count of pills. We expect to have a final design and test of this piece within 30 days.
Kickstarter and first shipments of hardware
We have engaged Dan Rascal Studio, a Canadian agency to help us tell Bowhead’s story to the Kickstarter community. Filming begins in April and we expect to launch our campaign in May, with a promise of shipping Bowhead devices within 6 months.
In accordance with our release schedule, we will be capping the amount of units we sell on Kickstarter to 2,000.
At-home lab tests
We have executed agreements with a leading at-home test provider in the United States that ships globally and tests for:
- Vitamin D
- Cortisol (well established research between cortisol and stress correlation)
- Hormone Panel
- Neurotransmitter tests
We also signed a master agreement with a leading genetic test provider that allows us to provide nutritional and pharmacogenetic profiles for users.
Official press releases will be released in the coming weeks.
Bowhead Vitamin Update
We have been working on developing a proprietary Vegan D3 vitamin and are pleased to announce that we will begin a manufacturing production trial run next week.
Did you know most current Vitamin D pills contain Sheep’s wool? Yuck!
New Additions to the Bowhead Team
Last but not least we would like to welcome the new additions to our team. View more details on each team member on our updated website.
- Mike Rodriguez, Chief Technical Officer, 6+ years at IBM
- Vince Alessi, Advisor, Forbes 30 under 30, award-winning scientist, 21 patents, experienced in launching Medical Devices
- Joy Wang, Supply Chain, previously worked in Glaxo Smith Kline Consumer Healthcare
- Yhair Perez, Blockchain Researcher
- Astrid Victoria Villanueva, Blockchain Researcher and Biomedical Engineer
- Enrique Emmanuel Perez, Full Stack Developer
- Mariana Zermeño Aldana, Business Development with a Bachelor Degree in Dentistry
We’re Hiring!
Please send us an email with your CV to support@bowheadhealth.com. We are looking for engineers, designers, scientists and people who love healthy living!
