Today's conversation features Ryan Geerdink, co-founder of Health Blocks and the Pando Network. We discuss how Web Three provides a new way to incentivize positive health behavior. We discuss the importance of longitudinal individual data to shift insights from merely preventative to predictive. We discuss health block's innovative idea for health data collectives we discuss how health blocks is using iotex's tech Stack. All this and much, much more.
dean: Okay, Ryan, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. So before we get into your background Roseanne, a previous guest on this podcast and your co-founder at healthblocks, and I discussed a lot about preventative health and the idea that health shouldn't start in a doctor's office after an ailment has metastasized into a medical emergency, but that health is actually a function of lifestyle and also of the data that we can capture [00:01:00] using external devices like watches, Fitbits, et cetera.
And I also saw that your other company called Pando Network appears to have a more holistic, almost spiritual vision for health, whereas Health Blocks is a more practical web three data-driven company. So I wanna talk about both of these companies today, but just to start, walk me through your background and what led to your dedication to preventative health.
ryan: Yeah, you had Roseanne earlier on the show. Thanks for the question. It's been quite a journey to get to this stage actually. But like I said, Roseanne has more of a biomedical background, so that's where her passion for the human body comes from. And my path led to this through more of an interest in sustainability and natural sciences.
Yeah, I have always had a big passion for wanting to preserve it and see if I can give a little bit back to nature. And then I said what can I do maybe use my brains to [00:02:00] work on some problems with regarding the energy crisis that we face. ,I was very much into sustainability and renewable energy technologies.
But during my studies there and in my journey talking to a lot of people I noticed that I was mostly busy reducing unsustainability or unsustainable behavior, trying to do a little bit less pollution, a little bit less of unsustainable behavior rather than creating a sustainable way of life, actually.
And I think for Roseanne, that part was in terms of, we're just living life and then we become unhealthy or sick, and how can we then reduce sickness rather than what is a healthy life. And at some point we, when we said at the kitchen table we've always been discussing these types of relationships between nature, human health and what kind of impact lifestyle has on you as a person, as a human being, but also on your environment, on on the globe.
In the end, because we are with so many people nowadays, having [00:03:00] such large footprints. So from there, we saw maybe your lifestyle can not only be something that has a positive contribution to your personal well-being, but also to your environment. And in the end, we are living inside this environment that we actually live in.
So in the end, if it comes back to you and it harms you, then maybe we should try to figure out a way of life that is both sustainable for our ecosystems and for your personal wellbeing.
dean: One of the things that often bogs people down in this conversation is when we think about attacking systems that many people blame for environmental catastrophe. It's an overwhelming thing to address at the institutional level, at the global level.
But if you think about the individual, our habits, our lifestyle as the kernel then when it's a population level habit, everyone's doing the same thing. It leads to that unsustainable global institutional, degradation of the environment. What you're talking about is [00:04:00] something that's more practical.
We can really only fix what we're doing as individuals, but if that's done on the appropriate scale, will actually have global impact. So what exactly was Pando network? That was a company you started in 2019, I believe. And how does that relate to health blocks?
ryan: Yeah. So with the Pando Network, we started out as a startup where we wanted to do campaigns or just projects that embody this vision on life. And how we can give a positive contribution to the world. And that company evolved into a company where we are doing a lot of health campaigns on a preventative health side for communities.
So that's a bit more on a larger scale rather than the pure individual scale that we're aiming for with healthblocks so targeting purely individual behavior. And yeah, out of the philosophy of the pando network and the things that we did in communities, we saw maybe there's an opportunity for a bit more technologically driven approach to help people in their health journey [00:05:00] and creating a longer healthy lifespan for for individuals and eventually on a global scale.
This technology that came up with when we met IoTeX and team gave the opportunity to start these types of what we call large decentralized data collectives, where we can learn new things on a new scale with new insights that hopefully will lead to what we find very important healthy aging in the end.
dean: And what we're talking about is two sides to it, right? Where on the one hand you need to have the data and the insights to actually learn what is healthy behavior. You need to understand what actions need to be taken, but you also need an incentive side. How can you get people, once that information exists to actually take that action?
And I see Health Blocks. My understanding is it's doing both simultaneously. You're creating these data collectives, as you call it, which allows you then to run analysis at a scale that gives you very comprehensive insights, but then you also need an incentive layer, which is where Web [00:06:00] three really shines.
You actually can inject financial incentives into the day to day habits of individuals. Can you talk about how both of those things interact? What Health Blocks is doing both on the inside side and on the incentive side?
ryan: Yeah, that's that's exactly what we're trying to, I think that's also some. Pain point that we have sometimes with we're trying to say what we are actually doing because we are targeting both sides of the coin here. So on one side, you want people to start understanding that their data is valuable.
So you want them to incentivize with a behavior that they realize collecting data about your health and the things that you do in your daily life has a value and you want to keep on collecting them and owning them. I think not many people realize that they're not the owner of their data, but if you start learning that it's valuable, then you might want to own it as well.
And the interesting thing with health data and lifestyle data is that the longer you keep on collecting them. The more valuable they will [00:07:00] become, because you can get better insights out of it and your data pack becomes more valuable. So you want to incentivize people to collect data, keep collecting the data, and at the same time use smart incentives to change their behavior towards a more healthy lifestyle, because that's a different part of the problem that we're facing.
But there, these are the two problems: collect data, keep on collecting it and then collect the data from performing behavior that keeps you healthy. So that's what we're doing for our users actually. And on the other side, there's also people that are looking for this data to do analysis on.
To develop different AI or whatsoever. So this part of the equation that's also where we're trying to find partnerships, right? Find these people that are looking for this data and want to. Give people some reward for the data itself and the other side. There are also parties that are interested in incentivizing people to do something where that's from a more marketing perspective or from a governmental perspective, maybe to have [00:08:00] people walk more, sleep better from maybe even from an employer point of view.
dean: And what kind of insights are we talking about? You mentioned the need to keep people using their data collecting devices longer, because there's a big difference between having an instantaneous snapshot of somebody's health for a moment or even for a few days or weeks versus years.
How do everyday lifestyle patterns affect long term health? but what kind of insights are you looking at? Are there things that we just don't have access to today that this type of data would reveal? can you get into some specifics?
ryan: Yeah, I think what's interesting here is seeing the user base as a large decentralized data collective, and the timeframe that they're. Collecting data on if you can compare these types of data and maybe even events that have triggered for other people this will come in really handy in terms of projection of your path that you're on.
If you have a lot of data [00:09:00] that has been collected long term for many different populations, then in the end you might use this data for an AI or something that can gain insights on it to project in the end for other people that are still on a on a different time scale, collecting their data.
Where there might be headed if they keep on continuing with these types of behavior that you can see from the data. It's useful for the shifts from using data as preventative towards predictive. I think that's what we're looking for on a longer time.
I think there are there are different ways to do it. I think showing this information straight on the phone is something that might scare people a little bit. On the other hand, maybe that's also something that might trigger you to do something differently. But hopefully with the web three possibilities, we can use some incentive to get people rather than getting them scared, get them our reward, saying if you do 10% more steps if you walk 10% more this week than you did the week before, then [00:10:00] you're starting to to reduce these risks that that for example, for a heart attack or some other consequence that you might face living this type of behavior.
I think that and this is what web three made possible here is this incentive that you can provide for people to do something healthier than they did today before. Rather than just scaring them, only , which is not the best option always for behavior change.
dean: Yeah. And you mentioned employers as one potential market, financial provider for this type of thing, where an employer has an incentive to have healthy, productive employees. But where I really see it is actually at the governmental level because preventative health is the ultimate public good, especially when you have a high cost healthcare system.
Taking more and more of gdp it's subsidized by the government in many countries. Obviously in the Netherlands it's much more than in the US , throughout Europe it's much more than the US on average, but there's actually a [00:11:00] tremendous government incentive as well.
Have you thought about, you're still early stage, but is there potential for grants or for partnership with national governments?
ryan: Yeah, I think that there are definitely opportunities there if you can prove that these incentives work to get people to do something differently. And like you said I think there's definitely a responsibility for a government on the other hand you work about 40% of your week
40% of your time you are at work. Your employer might also have some skin in the game there also for themselves, of course. But I do believe that governments can get involved with healthblocks. I think even for the municipal, so local governments here in the netherlands we can definitely see some useful pilot cases that we can endeavor on.
For example I think what's really nice if you can take on a small town, between 20 to 40,000 people, let's say most towns in the Netherlands, they have pretty good infrastructure for cycling, for [00:12:00] walking, for cars also. And in most of these towns or villages, there are also different parks.
And these parks are nice to see are just nice to relax in, to meet people, but also to exercise. So what if you can set up an activity pool within Healthblocks, together with a local municipality and say if people walk this between these four or five parks this week, maybe two times a week, then you get a reward.
Maybe you can call it the local town token that you might receive for that. And maybe also. some other reward , and it's local town Token, and you can then spend in the local health store or whatsoever, or use it for anything that's that's also beneficial for your health. I don't think it would would be nice if you can if it do cigarettes or something, but this is something that you can do on a local level, right? And also this is something that we are looking into and that is definitely applicable on a very local and very small scale. And that people might be interested in [00:13:00] also in, because it's always close by.
You don't have to go really far to do something. This is something that could work in the Netherlands. I'm not sure how something like this would work in a bigger city, but for example, in New York or wherever, in the States. But these types of pilot concepts might work also on different places.
dean: Yeah, and that's where DAOs and Web three in combination with secure hardware devices really shines is this idea of having data. DAOs basically like you said, public health DAOs, where you can actually contribute to an activity pool and receive some form of payout prorata with your contribution, you're actually able to see your contribution to your community, how your health actually interacts with other people's.
How you're actually contributing to an overall elevation in the health of a community, which is really exciting actually. So in Pando network there's this term you use, I think it's mind, body, planet. And I want to ask you about mind, body, planet as well and how you [00:14:00] view the relationship between individual health and habits and a collective version of health. There's even an element of eastern spirituality here where you can think about a connect, a collective consciousness where every individual is contributing to a universal kind of system. And if you elevate yourself, there's an somewhat intangible way that elevates your neighbors, whether they see how you're acting and they subconsciously mirror what you're doing.
or potentially, at an even kind of deeper scale than that, do you have a personal philosophy about how individual habits relate to universal collectives?
ryan: Yeah I think what we try to explain with the mind, body, planet connection is realizing that you are part of a larger ecosystem. That you're part of something bigger than yourself. And, but as a person, it's important to take care of your mind and your body. But be aware [00:15:00] that this mind and body is part of this bigger planet or even universal.
And also that for us the work that we do here on a daily basis with the pen network and that help blocks also. It embodies the philosophy that we have is always that we are realizing that we are doing something for something bigger. And always maybe even in service of our planet or our neighbors or people around us to help making the world a healthier, better, more, more livable space in the end.
And also by, by doing so and doing, operating with this philosophy in mind, hopefully other people are also inspired to yeah, to do things not just for themselves, but also for somebody else. Because I think in the end, there's also a benefit for your personal health if you are able to. Put your own efforts into this larger perspective and [00:16:00] for helping other people or animals or whatever, or just taking care of something else rather than just yourself.
And yeah that's the way that we that we tackle problems that we basically few. The world. And this is also I think how we came up with working on health blocks as well. Because there is this large issue where we live life, and this is really present in the western societies, right?
With high welfare and, When when when we look at that we see these issues about health occurring that might not be necessary because they are actually, a lot of the problems are preventable by living a different way of life. That's not not necessarily yeah, very difficult.
It's been made difficult by being exposed to marketing efforts the, and [00:17:00] other efforts to keep you doing unhealthy behaviors. But we hope that by something such as help blocks we can give people this these insights and this incentive to see how you can live differently and.
Maybe better at least healthier and hopefully with a with a future perspective that you live longer healthier as well. So that's that's I think, yeah, how we how we. Take on daily life here at at our office. And also just in, in daily life in general. I think we do not separate that much anymore between what we what we value in life and the values that we've we've put in the DNA of our businesses as well.
dean: Yeah. And it's much easier often for people to take action if it's for the benefit of other people or a collective. Sometimes the individual incentive, obviously being healthy has its own rewards. You're, you feel better, [00:18:00] you're have more energy, you live longer, but sometimes that's not enough.
Sometimes you need a broader contribution to a collective to, to get you over the hump of actually pushing. And getting out of some habits that were ingrained by, marketing, a culture of consumption of unhealthy foods and whatever else. And DAOs are actually such a tremendous technology for instantiating that collective.
And I'm curious to hear your thoughts about how these DAOs might actually work, because help blocks, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a platform really for other. To come in. The long term vision is a platform for other people to plug in DAOs in their communities. You might have one or two that you use as test cases, as examples of what you're looking to incorporate, but really you want to create a platform that other people can plug into and implement in their local communities or even in their countries.
So can you talk about just specifically how these DAOs might work, how the governance might work, what the financial payouts might be if there are [00:19:00] financial pay?
ryan: Yeah. For these DAOs to work, I think it's necessary for us to have the infrastructure ready where this decentralized data collective is very solid. Because the do then can use this data collective to make decisions in the end. And like I said, in the example of a local municipality, right?
Where where a local municipality can use the platform to write a smart contract that uses both GPS data step data, maybe maybe also something like like hardware to see if you've done it. If your heart rate went up or something like that. And of course This also what we really liked about how biotech's approaches the the machine fire vision to, if you have these these different types of data being able to analyze them in a privacy serving or confidential confidential way is really key to make these DAOs successful.
A local municipality could then could write these smart contracts using different types of data from people that [00:20:00] are are living in this this certain area. And after we've helped in the first phase, we will probably need to help these local local governments to set these set to write these smart contracts and to set it down.
But then it can operate itself, right? And distribute these rewards. This is something that could work for DAOs, but also maybe for some marketing effort for a business. So let's say an outdoor or a lifestyle brand wants their community to run collectively. A certain amount of kilometers, miles.
They write the smart contract together through the help of platform. And people can then contribute this data to this small, smart contract DAO thing, right? And if the conditions are met, then people who have contributed to the, to this this activity pool. Because this activity pool is basically a small DAO.
You will get the reward from that. But yeah, I think we are also open for IDs on. On larger IDs for these dos because I can imagine there are there [00:21:00] are bigger things that you can actually do with all, with this large decentralized data collective that we are building here.
And I'm also curious, Dean what you would like to see?
dean: It's always tempting early on to imagine the biggest possible vision, countries implementing this. But practically speaking, I definitely could see, in Silicon Valley, for example, Google, Facebook startups implementing this company wide, right?
Probably engineers are most amenable to using this type of technology and probably most in need given their rather sedentary lifestyles on average. But I could certainly see Silicon Valley startups in general, being a fairly early adopter. But going back to the big vision, cuz I'm guilty of this, probably more than anyone just thinking big picture... Balaji wrote this book called The Network State.
Which you might have heard of Ryan. I'm not sure if you've read that, but it basically talks about how with DAOs and Web three, we can fork countries and create micro states that instantiate a new moral value [00:22:00] and a moral value for one of these network states. Could be health, it could be activity, right?
And so they could actually start a new parallel country. Where from the get go, its primary value is the wellbeing of its citizens. And that could be something as small as everyone takes to be a citizen in this country. You have to walk 10,000 steps a day, Or it could be adjusted for your age and et cetera.
It could be, you have to improve yourself X amount every year, for example. So there's a malleability to community and states that actually something like Health Block's platform could be very useful for. But practically speaking, I could definitely see companies, startups integrating this just to increase the wellness of their employees.
So I'm curious just to hear the current state of health blocks. I know it's in beta, you have several thousand beta testers. and this is an app on their phone that's integrated with Fitbit and a couple [00:23:00] other sensors. Can you just describe what health block's current state?
ryan: Yeah, so currently we're, like I said we are in the beta phase. People are able to connect their devices to health blocks through Google, FitBit Apple Health. Currently direct integration with Fitbit is there and with Garmin. So there are a lot of devices are already compatible with with health blocks.
And at this point in time, people can collect health tokens by by setting 10,000 steps a day providing four answers to a daily questionnaire about their health, about their self perceived. And also by burning a certain amount of calories. And these are the three goals that we set out with.
But we are capable of collecting data for sleep. Heart rate and a few others. So there could be different goals as well. So something like sleep to earn would be something that, that is possible. And so this is the stage where we're at and we are already above I think 12,000 active users now.
So it was pretty overwhelming to see so many people. [00:24:00] Yeah. Are interested in health in general, I think, and also want to work on their health and, eh, earn something in return. I think that's a, that's an important part. And now we are looking to to develop further into the main version.
Also tweaking on for the new version as well. Looking into the possibility of introducing an NFT game. So there, there's a lot of work going on here behind the. To get to the next level. And also on the token side, I think tokens wise there there will be some some improvements.
Also keeping in mind what's going on with other projects that are not the same as health blocks. I think other projects are more focused on either setting steps or a bit more the yeah, how do you call it? The activity side of health. Whereas we are trying to develop this health data, this decentralized health data platform, that's, I think our biggest vision.
And in doing so helping people with different incentives to do these smaller activities that they can do to improve [00:25:00] their health. But this is something that we are currently working on. And like I said, we need to. find the right balance, I think between bringing in real world value from people that want this data and that the tokens that you receive are somewhat backed by value that somebody wants to bring to get this data.
Whereas now we see with some other projects that tokens are just being injected into the ecosystem endlessly. And you need new users and more users to prevent these tokens from entering system endlessly. And in the end Bringing not much value anymore to the users.
This is a problem we're solving, and I think we are we've come a long way. And hopefully we can make the next step with health blocks 2.0, if I may call it like that.
dean: Yeah. Many of these two-earn protocols had token systems that resembled pyramid schemes. There really wasn't another side to the marketplace. There wasn't a demand side for the token outside of new users coming in. And that's an unsustainable dynamic, [00:26:00] just intrinsically you have a hard cap of the number of people that can enter your ecosystem in a short period of time.
So when you have a sustainable ecosystem, you actually need two sides to that, where you have a demand from companies, governments, researchers. Who actually want to pay to use that data. You can sell licenses to it or sell access. And then that money can then flow back to the users who are generating the data.
And that's a much more sustainable model where there's many ways to implement it. The common one is a token burn model where you just take, every crypto exchange has a version of this. They take a percentage of their revenues every quarter, they buy their token and they just burn it.
So it's reducing the. Increasing the per token value in USD terms or real terms. So yeah, that's, that sounds like the direction you're heading more or less. Do you have a sense for what the early demand will be for this data, where it'll come from?
ryan: Yeah, I think there are two ways to get this demand. [00:27:00] I think there's demand for data from research perspective. Just universities or other businesses that are doing research on certain populations or certain certain people. And on the other side there's also not necessarily a demand for the data, but also some exposure, maybe more from a marketing perspective.
Like I said, if you are, you want some local brand exposure, maybe even currently with, for example with with Facebook or in Instagram through mata, you can do this advertisement, right? But what if you can set up a local activity pool as. Local as a local gym, right? You say people in this town, you can set up this this activity pool for doing exercise in the park on Tuesday night at seven, and you can prove that you were there.
Then you will get a reward for that, Something like that. So that's more from like really local, but also from a larger brand perspective, you have a lot of marketing budget to, to do something like the 1 million miles with the community. Then this [00:28:00] this activity pool will be paid by the by the business that wants this marketing exposure.
So they buy the tokens. The tokens are put into the activity pool and activity pool. People who are contributing to this pool will get the rewards. From that are put in there and are actually backed by by real dollar value from the business that wants this marketing exposure.
So I think these are the two biggest sites where we get this this value and demand from at first. I cannot definitely say the biggest demand security from people that want to do analysis on this data or people that want just marketing or brand exposure.
The conversations that we have are from both sides are pretty positive. So I cannot really say that whether one is bigger than the other in terms of an opportunity.
dean: I spoke with Roseanne maybe four or five months ago, and it sounds like significant progress has already been made in terms of the development of the ecosystem, the maturity of kind of these partnerships that are coming [00:29:00] online. And do you have a kind of a timeline for token issuance?
I imagine most of the people in your beta. Very much financially motivated in terms of wanting early access to the token and hopefully get some gains from appreciation. Is there a timeline for kind of token issuance and the token side?
ryan: I think Roseanne is more into these timelines. So I cannot give you one definitely for now. Last time we discussed I think we are lifting it towards Q1 of 2023. I think the market has been also a little bit rough on.
And I think we are developing pretty nice given the current market conditions that we are developing in which also an opportunity because there's not much buzz around. So you can keep on working but at the same time, There are some challenges regarding funding stuff such as that.
Finding investors the climate is is a bit silent for rather than [00:30:00] when we started out at first But we keep on we keep on building. And yeah, still significant progress is being made here with different partners et cetera.
dean: So another component to health blocks is data privacy. And that's one of Iotex's core ethos is for its ecosystem. Is ensuring that the data as much as possible is held locally on devices, or it's encrypted locally before it's sent out. It's not getting used in black box algorithms, with big tech companies, et cetera.
Can you talk about healthblock's approach to data privacy and how you reconcile individual privacy with the need for data sets that are statistically useful in the extent that they reveal i ndividual data?
ryan: I think this is this is one of the big questions that we are we're asking ourselves also. First of all, of course, we would love to use devices that are private by design. And I think this is also where we are relying on and working [00:31:00] together with biotechs to use the tech stack that they built so that we can ensure these these characteristics of of data privacy and data exchange in the privacy preserving matter within our ecosystem.
And IoTeX is of course making steps with with Webstream which they're currently building. And we at Healthblocks are really grateful for the opportunity to work together with them and also using the text act that, that they provide because, developing this type of stuff in house for, especially for something for a small startup such as us, that's not possible
They're really doing they're really doing a great job regarding that. And yeah, so we try to we try to drive the road ahead also together with with the development of IoTeX at the same.
Yeah, so it's it's always nice that you are able to find tech support or ask questions about how things work. Their their tech regarding decentralized identities is is something that that we use. On the [00:32:00] other side, we use the blockchain of course, to to establish the transactions and the smart contracts with IoTex and like I said Webstream is I think is going to be to be a game changer and also something that, that we can we can definitely work with. So these are actually the main components of the IoTeX ecosystem that we, of the IoTeX text that we currently work with. And I think there's also a lot of work going on in terms of opportunities to use confidential computing, stuff like that. But I think that will require a little bit more time but we are happy to to keep following the progress over there. Implement these new types of tech that is being developed via IoTeX as soon as we can.
dean: Yeah. And as we wrap up here, I just want to ask how exactly you're using IoTeX Stack? What technology are you taking from them? What are you plugging into and maybe what else do you need from them to make the best version of health blocks that you can make?
ryan: Yeah. So basically what we're doing is we currently get the data from these different APIs Google, [00:33:00] Apple, Fitbit, garment, and then make a copy of that basically into your D I D, which is DID on the IoTeX blockchain. And from there we can see we, we use the smart contracts also to follow it whether you've done something yes or no.
And in the end based on meeting the condition for, let's say walking 10,000 steps in your local time zone in 24 hours timeframe. If you meet the condition, then you will get your health tokens as a reward. And the same goes for the for the calories burnt. And the questionnaire also.
And like we talked about earlier on, I think the the secure the secure hardware for wearables or. These other type of health related devices. We, yeah, we really looking forward to hopefully maybe even different partners that join the ecosystem that are capable of building.
And see if we can set up a partnership for that. Then we can yeah, then we can some somehow close the data loop and people can then attest this this device to their to their DID. [00:34:00] So this DID will then have these all these different types of devices connected to it and then enrich.
Your profile, basically your your health profile with these with these secure hardware. But for now yeah, there aren't that many opportunities. For that. So we still so yeah we still use these legacy devices. But with that frame, I think there will be a major improvement also on, on using those.
And yeah, it's also a call to action for for people that are interested in. In building these types of devices. So reach out to the IoTeX team, maybe see where how they can help you on making a legacy device into a a secure device. And if you are, if you make a health related device with sensors please contact us and maybe we can we can set up a good partnership.
dean: That's a great transition to my final question, which is if there's any calls to action, for listeners that you want to leave us with, including the one you just left you can go ahead and say that now, Ryan.
ryan: Yeah, I think just download the app start using [00:35:00] it, start getting comfortable with the id, that your data is valuable and that you can put your data to use. Do not use these type of apps for thinking that you can get rich or anything, but use it as a means to improve your health, which will benefit you every day for the rest of your life, hopefully and start getting used to the, that is data that you're, that is valuable that you can compound on.
Get used to the ID to collect data daily and that this daily collection of data and keeping it for yourself, owning it is something that will compound with value for you. And this is the part. Where you might ize your data set later on rather than a quick get yeah, get rich quick scheme that's not what we are here for.
dean: Nicely said. All right thanks again, Ryan.