On April 30th (GMT+8), InnoKOL had a fascinating conversation with Mr. Jean-Philippe DIEL，the Founder of SymbionIQ, talking about his new endeavours with SymbionIQ Labs and The SymbionIQ Foundation.
Jokia Yin: Can you introduce yourself?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
My name is Jean-Philippe DIEL, I am French, but I live in New Zealand for about 22 years now.
I am the founder of SymbionIQ™ Labs and The SymbionIQ™ foundation two separate entities working together to redefine the future of Health Pre-Care. A phase of your life where you have started to realize this body isn’t going to last forever and where we motivate you to learn and take the right steps to make sure you add life to your years (as in the famous definition of Health span dear to Dr Peter Attia MD a renowned US surgeon converted to what he coined to be Medicine 3.0).
I am a bit like a cat, at 54, I have almost had 7 lives already! in previous lives I have had a successful corporate career, and I have been an entrepreneur for now about 15 years. Life has led me to several different corners of the planet and taught me that everything was always about people, I have therefore learned to listen and adapt to different environments, different markets, different cultures.
My wife is Chinese from Wanning in Hainan, and except during the pandemic, we try to return to China as often as we can with our two handsome boys nearly 11 and 3.5 years old.
Sadly, my Mandarin isn’t good enough for me to speak fluently. I hope this changes in the future.
Jokia Yin: In your biography, you speak of new endeavors with SymbionIQ™ Labs and The SymbionIQ™ Foundation. Can you tell us a bit more about what this project is about and what you are aiming to achieve?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
Certainly. We start from the simple fact that (I am not sure how it is in China) but at least in the west the Healthcare system is broken. Very specialized, very procedural, very centralized. This leads to data being also very siloed. You visit a doctor, and they write all the information about you into their computer system and while government regulation says it is YOUR DATA, in fact it is in the custody of sometimes not even the doctor but the doctor’s IT system provider. There are long list of duties and cares they must comply with and if you want a copy of it (although it’s yours) you need to request it nicely sometimes several times until they finally agree to give you a copy in the format of their choosing which often means as many formats as there are providers.
We believe there is a need for a completely different model where users / patients are in control and custody of their own data. That way there is almost no need for all the regulations about taking care of third-party data since in this case the data is with you and never leaves you. We are building such ecosystem to put you the user / patient in the driver seat of your own health journey, motivate you, guide you and ultimately help you understand yourself better and help improve your quality of life for the longest term possible.
Jokia Yin: What’s unique and game-changing about blockchain from your perspective? How do you see blockchain revolutionizing health tech?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
We very much see blockchain as a technology stack and we wish to stay far away from its “casino” not to say ‘Financial gambling” aspects. For us it’s about the immutable ledger, the ability to encrypt private health data, the decentralization of storage and actors.
With blockchain technology we are also able to create a micro-economic environment where we can control the distribution of revenue, engineer collaboration, align interests and ultimately activate powerful network effects that will help us grow this ecosystem in the same way Linux became the operating system of choice for network servers, we wish to become the middleware for new health apps to be built and empower users and patients. A way to align the interests of Users with Content Creators, Builders, Funders and AI Data marketplaces.
We prove this by building our own app on this, we call it NeoMoov™, it’s a content creator platform for movement lessons to be recorded and delivered for people to train on. Think of it as TikTok in 3D. Your Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Kungfu, Dance or Golf teacher can record their lesson, you can download it and see your own digital self making the moves you are trying to learn in 3D. All you need to do is study them, wear our NeoTrackR™ Mocap sleeves and try your best to reenact them. The app will help you compare, tell you where you did wrong and how to rinse repeat without injury, If you are successful it will reward you and guide you to the next lesson, all to be taken in your own time. Perfect for busy moms or dads developing a bit of a tummy.
Today we have opened a pre-seed round to find investors to fund our development for SymbionIQ™ Labs, I would like to take advantage of this interview to call in for people who might be interested in innovative technologies like ours with a massive potential to disrupt entire industries.
You can head to our website https://www.symbioniq.com and get in touch with us.
Jokia Yin: What do you think will be the impact of AI in reshaping the future of healthcare?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
What we are experiencing is fascinating. For years AI was basically ML (Machine learning), algorithms working on data sets and finding patterns or simply doing data processing and analysis. They didn’t have the ability to “reason” or “talk” to each other.
Now we have this thing called Neural networks doing “self-learning”, we have LLMs, and this capability to power things with Natural Language that was suddenly brought to visible mainstream through the team at Open AI. While we are still figuring out the extent of what looks to be a tectonic shift, and what jobs are going to be impacted and disappear and which are going to be created, we can already see some early impact in healthcare.
Diagnosis is being impacted as an agent will soon do better diagnosis than a doctor, or a surgeon basically because of their immense data base of data (comparatively to the memory of any living human being) and their ability to relentlessly work without missing any details to solve an issue.
In our project we are planning to use AI at various levels, of course we use traditional ML to do a lot of the computation in our Motion Capture hardware. We also plan to use natural language as it is a fantastic way to help structure data and put some reasoning around it.
I also help to traverse that data to give context to an educated recommendation around a personalized health and fitness plan to follow or answer some burning question you may have around your biology or physiology. Think of it as a health Copilot.
Of course, starting with fitness and wellness for us is a simpler path to more complex data and it saves us from having to think too closely about regulations at first. We can finetune the system and deal with the details of this later. But our bigger plan is obviously to extend our data into medical history including genetics later on, as this is essential to fully understanding the health status of an individual and to guide him/her to the right steps to living healthier longer.
Jokia Yin: As a passionate hardware enthusiast that has spent most of his career around innovative hardware devices, how do you foresee the trends of digital healthcare development in the following five years?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
I think we are about to see a Cambrian explosion of IOT sensor devices dedicated to health some soon to be ingested or implanted under the skin. AR VR is also coming in a big way. Unfortunately, most are going to come with the same platform economic model that exploits your data and leaves you with “Death by Dashboard”. That Data is going to get Siloed by big corp somewhere and we aren’t going to advance science because it will be behind paywalls.
There are already so many issues with Biobank data availability around the world, its ethnic and gender representativeness for instance that we can only wonder if we let this happen how far more centralized and exclusive to the rich the system will get. Today it is this data that is used to train AI and ML algorithms leading to so many incorrect predictions.
Equity and access to care is a big issue in our markets. We also see growing medical deserts where it is very hard to access professionals. That’s not the future I want for humanity.
I see that all these devices that are on your wrists, your fingers, or strapped to your chest. And I see a gigantic opportunity to crowd source the biggest pool of data ever. It’s your choice to decide to list those devices on our ecosystem under your profile and complete your health picture together bringing your heart rate, your sleep, your nutrition for example with your physical activity data. The more the better. And to make sure privacy isn’t an issue we use blockchain tech to store, reward and let you control and manage your own data. This is the only way we can build an actual full picture of your health and it’s the only way we are going to be able to discover new patterns, new reactions, new cures by studying at the intersection of different disciplines. Time to get out of the lab. Finally, this is the only way we crowd source data from everyone around the globe regardless of gender or ethnicity and foster the biggest data sets to train AI on. AI that really knows you better than you know yourself but remains at your service and not at the service of someone else at your expense.
Jokia Yin: We understand you are planning to use a DAO governance model for the SymbionIQ™ ecosystem, can you explain why such a choice and how you think this will help break down health data silos?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
Indeed. Our first concern is to engineer what I call Plausible Neutrality. Basically users / creators should see that we are not at both ends of the equation. While in the building phase we naturally are, once we launch, we will also handover the platform to a DAO community to maintain and manage and retire as SymbionIQ™ labs to make more hardware and more apps.
DAOs are these new interesting models of Governance where smart contracts allow you to automate certain functions with nobody at the elm (no corrupt middle man). And Governance is an essential component of our ecosystem, we want to tap into the collective wisdom to keep updating and maintaining the network and we want to bring other builders in to enjoy the same stack and same benefits we enjoyed. It’s the only we can start to create a pool of distributed and decentralized data users are in custody off but that we can offer them anonymously to monetize and reward.
What you get at the other end is the same pool of users for which you now have all the possible quantified self data points volunteered out and remunerated. A unique blessing in the age of AI for instance. And of course it has been safely anonymized.
Jokia Yin: How prepared is SymbionIQ™ to play a leading role building the new health protocol network economy?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
Very prepared! But once again this is something that can only happen with the help of a unified community. We find rewards, monetary incentives to still be the best way to align interests and change behaviors. We very much look out to all those other projects in the Decentralized Science space (DeSci) for example but also in the move to earn space and hope they agree to join.
The beauty of web3 is composability. We do not have to build every single element of the stack we need. Many are already built by others. What we need is to collaborate, federate and partner with the right building blocks to achieve what we need to achieve.
For example, one of the partnerships in the works is with Ocean Protocol - a well-known stack for AI data monetization and who has recently merged with Fetch AI and Singularity Net to create a new ASI (artificial Super Intelligence) project. We have ongoing conversations with them. Goes the same with Digital Identity, Wallet abstraction, Verifiable credentials etc... Storage protocols IPFS / Filecoin etc.
Jokia Yin: One of the unique selling points of SymbionIQ™ is the ability to gamify what you called pre-Care; how do you plan to go about doing this?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
I recently had a doctor in Dubai explaining to me the realities of engaging patients who don’t what to change their habits. It certainly is tough. But there are ways to reward / incentivize. What we are building is a toolbox that helps content creator set challenges, quests, and scores all of which can trigger the appropriate reward the user can help fine tune. It’s a clever mix of Behavioral Psychology and Game theory.
Our stack also integrates a social graph layer that helps us basically integrate social into our front-end App. Users / patients can find professionals, new NeoMoov™ Classes, rate them, share them, get their friends to cheer for them etc. This engagement layer plugs into your friends, family, people you care about and whom you do not want to disappoint.
Jokia Yin: Chinese companies are expediting steps to “go global”, fueled by the rapid expansion of tech-intensive green products and the healthcare and information technology industries. With your track record in growing brands and revenue in both B2B& B2C domains, can you share some strategies for these companies to gain global market access rapidly?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
I probably can only talk about healthcare here or in our case health and wellness or what we decided to call pre-care.
China has a long-standing advantage with its manufacturing power to drive the quantified self-sensor market and grow low-cost adoption of the most important quantified-self biomarkers out there, heart rate, sleep nutrition, blood Glucose, blood pressure and contribute to the Cambrian explosion I talked before but do it while making its devices compatible with our vision of giving users ownership and custody of their own data.
Of course, the first perception is that they would be losing out not collecting the data for their own. The reality is totally otherwise. They can grow a significant content revenue share or a data monetization revenue share by joining our ecosystem.
When I look at Chinese products, I often see great promises and when I look at products that don’t perform well overseas, I often see that they failed on customer service and at developing a good user experience and user journey. That is hard to do, it takes a perfect understanding of the market culture and often takes several iterations if not generations of the products to find good product market fit. Sadly, I also saw businesses abandon or make quick money and move onto another niche rather than growing concentrically in the same domain to dominate it. So, my recommendation would be to persist and work on user experience and develop the best user journey out there, build ambassadors, fans, get repeat purchases until they happen over and over again to build strong brands via fans of those brands.
Jokia Yin: What’s your global market expansion strategy for SymbionIQ™?
Jean-Philippe DIEL:
What I can tell you without revealing secrets here, is that our strategy is one of very organic growth built alongside users and content creators to learn with them. It is also one driven by partnerships with others like us adepts of our vision, to offer a real alternative.
In our DNA, we are global from day one as we are entirely online, the only difference being in the countries where we invest additional support and localized presence to foster and guide communities where we will grow out from.
Thank you for this opportunity to talk with you today. I really appreciate it.
People can also look for me on LinkedIn, as long as I get some sort of intro message explaining why they would like to connect and I can establish a connection I am normally pretty easy going.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanphilippediel/
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Jean-Philippe DIEL is the founder of SymbionIQ, his expertise spans both B2B and B2C domains, having held significant positions such as Alcatel's Channel Marketing Manager and GM Marketing for Samsung NZ. He also established a marketing agency specializing in sports, sponsorship, brand building, sales, distribution, and retail. Known for his track record in enhancing brand growth and revenue generation, Jean-Philippe is a polymath and ENTJ, thriving in creative, technical, and multicultural settings. He is a keen problem-solver and business development architect.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Ms. Jokia Yin is the Founder of Innoverview and InnoKOL. Jokia has over 12 years of marketing and management experience, much of which has been in the Asia Pacific Region within events and PR industry. She has held key leadership roles executing market research and entry, developing sales channels and revenue generation, building marketing, finance and Operations related infrastructure for a more than 20 events related to retail, tourism, energy storage, blockchain, cosmetics domains.
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