#362 Transforming Healthcare: The Intersection of AI, Blockchain, and Fitness with Jean-Philippe Diel

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTL show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me from New Zealand, my friend Jean Philippe Diel. Jean Philippe, the way I love to do it on this podcast is I like my guests to introduce a little bit themselves, tell us about their [00:01:00] journey, what they are up to, and then we can take the conversation from there.

Jean-Philippe: That's awesome, Mehmet, thank you for having me. Um, we met at Token 2049 and I've been looking forward to, um, to this chat today. So, uh, my name is Jean Philippe. Um, I'm a, uh, a sort of French New Zealander. Uh, I call myself a freewheeling anomaly. Um, I've been in New Zealand for 22 years, um, uh, just this year.

Jean-Philippe: Um, a little bit about my background. I started my career in FMCG. I quickly, um, went back into tech because from a very young age, um, my passion has been tech and, um, um, I guess there's somewhere in the background, my father that, uh, Considered that that wasn't, um, that wasn't exactly a real job. He thought that was more like a hobby.

Jean-Philippe: Um, I did want at some stage to be an electronic engineer and I can, was just steered towards, uh, you know, business and things like that. So I ended up getting an MBA and, and working in, in, in business. And as soon as I could, [00:02:00] I kind of veered back into tech. So I was part of the, uh, sort of mobile phone revolution.

Jean-Philippe: I. Probably I'm a little bit like a cat now. I've got about six lives behind me. I'm turning 55 this year. Um, I was, um, um, in my last corporate job, um, GM marketing for Samsung in New Zealand, and that's almost like a whole life ago because I left Samsung in 2007 and eight after the Beijing Olympics. Um, and I've worked for myself ever since.

Jean-Philippe: Um, I've had a marketing agency, distribution agency, did a lot of different things. Um, kind of everything was a bit of a, um, sort of an experiment for me. It's more like finding what I could do, what I would, what I love to do and what I also could do out of New Zealand, which was my country of choice at the time.

Jean-Philippe: Um, and yeah, guess what? I'm still here. Um, 2014, uh, I was, um, you know, thinking with some friends about how we could, uh, the internet of things, um, and [00:03:00] apply that to sports. Um, and at the time the ideas were vastly different from what we're doing today, but, um, we, we thought about how we can strap athletes and sports people with loads of sensors and what could make sense, um, to do.

Jean-Philippe: And I stumbled. On something, uh, which I proposed to the other guys and, uh, the, the consensus wasn't there. We, we had loads of arguments. And so we disbanded at the time. Um, I discovered the work of a German gentleman called Mr. Laban. Um, and Laban is famous in, in the world of dance, uh, for choreography and Laban inspired me because he, Invented, basically solved in the 1900, um, the idea of a ballet company, a, uh, making a particular show.

Jean-Philippe: And how do I export that to ballet company B in a different town? Um, and if you think about music, there is a music score and then you just give that to, uh, musicians and they can read it and they can, [00:04:00] uh, play, uh, their version of it. Um, With movement, it's extremely analog. You have a coach, you have someone next to you teaching you how to make movement and Lebanon actually decided to create a language, a script, um, a way to describe movements and it's, um, sort of.

Jean-Philippe: As much qualitative aspects that, uh, then then quantitative aspects, so he combined a series of symbols, etc. When I saw that the movement script, I thought a movement score. I should say, um, when I saw that, I thought to myself, well, that is digital. So if I can actually use tech to record someone's movement, um, then I should be able to take that sort of, you know, common denominator of the movement.

Jean-Philippe: I call it common denominator. Um, because we're all have different bodies, obviously. Um, and I should be able to use that to teach someone else to make the same movement. I mean, as humans, if we look at a tall, skinny guy and a short, fat guy [00:05:00] doing the same movements, we can look at it and do some pattern recognition thing and say, yeah, they are making the same movements.

Jean-Philippe: And I can say with confidence that it's correct or not correct or, and that's what we use. Um, But how do you do that with a motion sensors or cameras or which technology you want to use? And that's the beginning of a very long rabbit hole, which brought me all the way to what we are doing today. So SymbionIQ is actually a two part project.

Jean-Philippe: Um, I founded SymbionIQ in 2020. Uh, with my own money and so far we're still bootstrapped and building, um, and we're, we're just, um, recently, um, started talking about, uh, a pre seed round and, and looking for investment. The idea for SymbionIQ is, um, that, um, uh, you know, um, the health, um, economy, uh, out there is not the healthcare economy is more a sick care economy.[00:06:00]

Jean-Philippe: Um, and that, um, you know, there's a whole movement now on people wanting to increase health span and work on their longevity. And, um, so I started thinking about data and how, and what kind of infrastructure uh, we needed to actually. change the game and change that economy. Um, before I, I deep dive into, um, what my vision is for that sort of infrastructure, um, I'll explain the link with, um, uh, you know, this first part of movement.

Jean-Philippe: Um, naturally when I, I thought about this idea of recording movement, Very quickly, uh, it became obvious that there were two things critical for this to work. One was, um, the actual data privacy side of things. Um, because, um, I'm a big advocate of data privacy and, and, and my [00:07:00] vision is that users should be in control and ownership of data.

Jean-Philippe: That's the first part. And so when I, when I was thinking about how we were going to do an app and helping people record movement, train, et cetera, um, very quickly, I thought there needs a back end that actually allows that and, um, and, uh, I, I didn't. I didn't have, um, a solution. So, um, that's when I started diving into web three and, and how, um, the actual blockchain, um, architecture offers, uh, different possibilities, um, to build, uh, a backend that would be more compatible with what I wanted to deliver and what my vision was for, um, users and data privacy in particular.

Jean-Philippe: So. What we're doing today is, um, you know, building that that back end and bootstrapping it with an app, which does what I'm talking about [00:08:00] before that up. Um, I've got an example here in front of me. Um, it's, um, nearly completely built today. Sorry for the notification that I'm going to keep popping up. Um, basically, uh, it's a motion capture engine.

Jean-Philippe: Um, that allows you to, um, put sensors on someone's body. It's a, they can content create their own lessons. So if you're a yoga teacher, physical activity trainer, um, you can put those sensors on your body, some IMU sensors. So a little bit of electronics, but very discreet and very simple. It's like, um, Um, you know, um, elbow sleeves and and knee sleeves and allows you full motion, uh, full body capture.

Jean-Philippe: And so you are live when you put that on, you press record on your phone and you make a dance or a move that you want to, um, teach other people. Um, and, and it converts that onto your digital self. And so [00:09:00] you can see that movement, you can then edit, you can do a whole bunch of things on it, um, which is similar to what you would do when you edit a video, um, you can put voiceover, you can put different actions, different pop ups to particularly if you want to give an advice at a particular time.

Jean-Philippe: Moment in the in the segment. You can have a pop up video or pop up something that, um, gives more sort of specific advice to the user. Um, in a nutshell, it is a content creator, um, tool for people to build their lessons and deliver them to the world. Now, um, the kind of benefit of that is from from video.

Jean-Philippe: Because today, most of the stuff is done Through video is that you can actually rotate around and see, you know, the movement in its full, I was going to say glory, but you can see the movement in three 60. So, um, if you're, uh, [00:10:00] unsure when you watch a video, normally what, you know, how's the person doing it from behind?

Jean-Philippe: You can't tell. Well, with this kind of, uh, tool, you can actually go and study that movement in three 60. Now your science tells us that when you do that. You're actually, um, you know, projecting yourself, making the movement. You're actually understanding it in a spatial sense, which is super critical. Um, and it accelerates your learning.

Jean-Philippe: It accelerates your ability to mimic that movement correctly. So, um, That's the app that we were we're building today in the back end. Um, and it's a whole rabbit hole. Once you build that up on on on it, obviously, you collect physical activity data. The idea is that you can augment that. You know, can augment it with data from your Apple Watch, data from your Garmin, data from your nutrition app, from your sleep monitoring, whatever device and quantified [00:11:00] cell devices you're using today.

Jean-Philippe: What that allows you to do is get a better picture of your health today. So, our backend is going to be Like a middleware layer for health and and I call it Linux for health. What we want is attract other startups to build on the same back end. Why? Because that allows you to have all the data points across your health, whether it's a mental health, where it's a nutrition, nutrition up, whether it's, you know, another physical activity, etc, etc.

Jean-Philippe: Um, and now I can probably. Unless you have a question at this stage, but I can, I want to get into telling you a little bit why I think, um, the sort of what I call the protocol network economy is better than platform economies.

Mehmet: Yeah, exactly. This was my other question to you, Jean Philippe, because, um, just a comment on, you [00:12:00] know, what you explained just now.

Mehmet: There's a saying, once an engineer is always an engineer, even if you go do marketing, sales, whatever, you come back to the same, same place. I know from myself for a, for a matter of fact, but, but yeah, like, you know, the, the, the idea, the concept itself, um, of having, this is as a middleware and you know, what you just mentioned.

Mehmet: Yeah. I would love to, to, to know why, Your vision went to this direction. Um, into building a network.

Jean-Philippe: Um, it's it's a series of those, right? Like I like I explained, um, 2014 2015. I was just thinking of the motion training app. And how we would do, we would do that. And, um, you know, because we didn't build it then and the idea just kept traveling in my head and I kept looking at other startups who are doing motion capture and things like that.

Jean-Philippe: And I kept thinking, this isn't going to [00:13:00] work with, you know, You know, taking people's data, um, there's, there's got to be another way. And so I started thinking about, um, web three in, in the midst of 2021, I think, uh, looking at what was happening and, and I, I mean, I was aware of blockchain and I was looking at the Bitcoin stuff.

Jean-Philippe: I said, I didn't do anything then. Um, I was always a bit on the sideline of financial stuff has never been, um, my strong forte. I, I, I was always a bit risk averse, so I don't gamble with my money. Um, so I did not, uh, run a Bitcoin farm or anything like that, but I was fascinated by the technology and what it could do.

Jean-Philippe: And that's really what I'm in here for. It's the stack. Um, so, um, if I just maybe give you a little bit of a rundown, what I think of today, what we have is what I call platform economies. Now, um, this is something that actually. The listeners are interested. [00:14:00] There's a beautiful book by Chris Dixon who talks about, you know, blockchains and, and, and Web three and talks about, um, that concept exactly of platform economies and, and protocol network economies.

Jean-Philippe: Now, what is, what is blockchain? Blockchain is, is just a ledger, right? But what it enables is addition of value in sort of a peer to peer scenario. Um, if you look at Facebook today, What Facebook is, is a platform. It's a platform economy. Um, on a platform like Facebook or YouTube or anyone like that, um, basically the, it's the attention economy.

Jean-Philippe: It's about monetizing content. Um, and you don't own that content. It's stored on Facebook or on YouTube or on Instagram. And if one day you breach terms or something happens, then they decide they will, you know, remove you from there. So you get banned and you lose all your content. So people are doing e commerce through Instagram or whatever other methods, [00:15:00] um, you know, there's, there's always a risk that you will lose all your followers from one day to the next because, um, you know, you, something happened and you, you get, You get pushed out or you get logged out and you don't comply with the terms or something that you didn't realize and it's it's sometimes it's been dramas, right?

Jean-Philippe: For people's businesses were built on that concept. Um, and and most of these platform economies are. Actually really about metadata and, and monetizing the metadata and getting more understanding of the, you know, user behaviors and tracking, et cetera. Um, and there's uh, been loads of scandals around that.

Jean-Philippe: Um, um, you know, people didn't realize their data was getting used in such a way, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, and more and more I think there is a global awareness. Um, that, um, you know, we don't quite like that. We don't quite like being tracked like that. We don't quite like that model. But unfortunately, [00:16:00] and I get told regularly by VCSoR, uh, people are in that community and they say, Oh, don't worry, people will scroll down, they will tick the box.

Jean-Philippe: And they will give you all the data. You don't need to worry privacy. People have a concern for that. But when it comes to it, they just don't act on it. Doesn't matter. They don't care. And I hear that every day. Literally. Now, I don't agree. I think it's a matter of choice. And there isn't an alternative out there.

Jean-Philippe: So yes, me first. I'm actually very transparent. A lot of my stuff is very open on the internet. You can read pages and pages and get bored about my life because I share a lot of stuff online. Um, and, um, yeah, that's my choice, but I think that's wrong. Um, you know, with, I'm a pioneer, I kind of like to test everything first day and I know the consequences, but, um, I just, I just think that model has reached its, um, use by [00:17:00] date now.

Jean-Philippe: Calm the platform, uh, the network, uh, protocol network economy. What is the protocol network economy? Uh, when, when you build on, on blockchain, your data, uh, belongs to you because you are actually using, uh, key pairs, um, uh, you know, wallet or something like that, and, and that encrypts your data. And, um, you, um, you can actually put the user in the center of their, um, health data in, in this particular case, because we're working on on health data.

Jean-Philippe: So, um, that also means that the user controls. Visibility and access. That means, you know, in a, in a take a use case of what happens with your health data with the doctor. Uh, we've got this weird conundrum where you go to a doctor and then they got a computer system and they write a whole bunch of things about you and when, but the data is yours.

Jean-Philippe: They say data privacy, that's, you know, it's your data, but it's hosted by the doctor. That also [00:18:00] creates a whole bunch of rules around how to handle. third party data and what you can do and what you cannot do, etc. That's a parenthesis. Um, but the reality is that that data is, um, uh, you know, when you want it, there are, you need a copy, really?

Jean-Philippe: Why? How? Uh, and it's really hard to get a copy. When you get a copy, it's in a weird format that you can't use. You can't really, uh, say, I want to transfer that into my own database. And then, and then mine it. No, that's not, users are not supposed to do that. They're supposed to be dumb. They're supposed to not understand or want to understand and they need to be guided by them with everything.

Jean-Philippe: So the doctor does it for you. Great, but we're now entering the age of AI. And personal copilots and and people are getting smarter with those things. Um, And and we want people to get smarter with those things Um, so why is it so hard to access your own data now in a [00:19:00] in a blockchain world? That doesn't happen.

Jean-Philippe: The data stays with you It's with keys when you go to your doctor you open a window on your data They enter stuff into your system when you leave, you close the door and the data stays with you. That data is, um, you know, in your property. Now you can choose to monetize it. You can choose to do a whole bunch of things, but then you get rewarded for it or you get paid for it.

Jean-Philippe: And so you can build a model now where, um, users benefit from that. Data usage and there are plenty of good, good ways to use data and there's loads of very valuable research that can be done out there where the users can contribute their data opt in and and get rewarded for sharing their data. Um, but, but, but my, my main.

Jean-Philippe: Reason for thinking this is the right model. It's about having all the data in one place. Now, if you look at all these platform economies, [00:20:00] what are they trying to do today? They get all your data. Why? Because they need more. They're very data hungry. Now, you can't put all your data everywhere unless you clone it everywhere.

Jean-Philippe: And in the age of AI, it means that someone's going to know more about you than you know yourself. That is where I start to think that's a little bit of a danger, you know, today until that used to be Your video surveillance was an example Um video surveillance, you might have hours and hours of data, but actually to exploit it and you just sit there and watch it Guess who hasn't got the time to do that?

Jean-Philippe: Nobody, right? I mean, if you've run a retail outlet, and I have in my past another life, probably, um, you know, you have all these cameras in the store to survey whether someone has taken a 20 cents note in the 20 note in the deal. Well, guess what? You don't know when, because that takes about 34 seconds and you have to watch a whole day to find where that was.

Jean-Philippe: Oh, yeah, [00:21:00] thank you. There was machine learning. Now you can actually monitor motion, find out what happened. But still, it's still hard. With AI, it'll pull out the one segment, say, here, this is when it happened. So, great for surveillance. Um, but it's also usable for a bunch of other things, which raise a bunch of red flags to me.

Jean-Philippe: So, back to health. Um, I want all the data in one place. Thanks. But I don't agree with having platforms owning all the data about us, um, or about me or about users in general. So I think it's better to build different platforms. Type of ecosystem where the data remains in control, uh, in the control of users where they can, um, um, get rewarded for it and, um, they can then have that a I copilot on [00:22:00] all imagine jurisdictions and regulations about you start with.

Jean-Philippe: DNA baseline. You put all your medical history. You then now have your, uh, full physical activity. You have all your biometrics through your watch, etc. Um, even potentially in the future, some devices that are not Storing the data with Garmin or other people like that, but actually, uh, directly on chain or directly under your keys and encrypted properly, then you can really have your AI copilot look at the full picture and say, Mr.

Jean-Philippe: DL, your risk of heart disease. is because of your genetics and your profile, et cetera. It's X percent with the excellent, you know, changes that you've made to your lifestyle, the, uh, the, the regular, you know, the calorie restrictions, the physical activity, et cetera, your good sleep. We can now say with confidence that your risk is [00:23:00] reduced.

Jean-Philippe: by 10 points. So you've increased your health span of these many years. That's the world I want to work towards. And that's the ecosystem I want to build.

Mehmet: Uh, Jean Philippe, one, one thing, I think I repeated it, maybe not related to the healthcare specifically, but about the platform. So, and I keep asking this question and I ask it Um, even founders, because when they decide to build a complete, uh, system or piece of software on top of this platform, let's be, let it be like meta or Facebook.

Mehmet: Let it be like, uh, uh, Amazon, let it be Twitter or X now. So, and open AI is another example. So I asked them, aren't you, I would not say scared, but worried that, you know, you're relying on a [00:24:00] giant and this giant can just unplug you any moment. And, uh, you know, some people, they, they don't, I'm surprised. And it's good.

Mehmet: Like you brought this point. Some people, they don't, uh, you know, think about consequences in the future to be relying on these platforms. I'm not saying these platforms are devil or like bad in, in, in, in any mean, but. You know, like just to, to put it in mind when it comes to something like health, I think, you know, and I, I know exactly what to refer to the scandals that happened before.

Mehmet: So where, you know, these guys, they know a lot of things about us. So especially social media, if, if you use it and I'm like you, I share a lot of things. One guy told me, Hey, like you do a podcast as well. So that means even your voice, your videos are all over the place. And you know what they can do with that?

Mehmet: I said, Yeah, I'm aware of this. I'm hoping the technology would help me avoiding, you know, any deep fake. But this is very important, Jean Philippe. Like, really, it's good that you brought [00:25:00] this point. Now, it looks to me, Jean Philippe, that, you know, you touched base on some of the stuff. But there are more broken areas in the health care today.

Mehmet: So data privacy is one thing, right? Um, and democratizing the data is another thing. What other aspects? And I think when you were here in Dubai, you mentioned to me something also related to the broad ecosystem of the health care. So where do you see, you know, the other challenges that you Are trying currently to, to solve out with the, uh, with the symphony.

Jean-Philippe: Well, around the data, there's some obvious biases. If you ever worked with things like biobanks, um, there's, there's a big, um, gender bias, ethnic bias with biobanks. Um, and it's a known thing, right? Um, um, you know, there's, there's, there's some, um, FDA, uh, investigation, uh, recently about, uh, sensors, [00:26:00] um, because, because biobanks, you know, basically is what our, uh, people are using to train their algorithm.

Jean-Philippe: So you train on the data, but if the data isn't representative. of the population you're going to address, then your algorithm is biased, somehow, because you haven't trained on the right data. Now, with the age of AI, we understand very, very clearly that we need to have two things with data, the right architecture and, and clean data.

Jean-Philippe: clean and well labeled, et cetera, representative of your target audience, et cetera. If you don't, then you're releasing a product which is accurate for 20 percent of the market, 30 percent of the market, but not everybody. And, um, you know, as long as there's examples, the FDA is investigating, um, the, um, oximeters, um, at the moment, the oximeter sensors because on darker skin, they give up to 32%.

Jean-Philippe: incorrect results, higher heart [00:27:00] rate. Well, that's a lot. That's a lot. So you've got all these oximeter sensors in Apple watch and Ura ring and ultra human, et cetera. Um, and they're trained on, on, um, you know, maybe not ultra human, cause that's a product from India, but, um, you know, there's always the risk that they're trained on white American males, um, because that's where the massive amount of data, because data comes from whoever was, Willing to share available one of the make money of it.

Jean-Philippe: Um, or in the right sort of urban, you know, demographic etcetera that that fit. So there's there's there's biases in in in who volunteers, um, in there already. So I guess my my vision off of a protocol network economy where we can put users in control of their data also mean that we can collect data.

Jean-Philippe: From a much wider, we're crowdsourcing data, the ground up from a much wider population and, [00:28:00] and more ethnic, ethnically diverse, uh, gender diverse, et cetera, et cetera. And so we're, I am my hope is that we eliminate these biases. Um,

Mehmet: Yeah. Now regarding this point and collecting the data from, of course, different, resources, different places.

Mehmet: So two things come to mind here. The first one, You know, in some, uh, geographies, there will be the challenge of the data sovereignty, right? Yeah. Um, so, so, so how do you think you can tackle this? And the second one, because you mentioned also AI, Jean Philippe, and when we mention AI, we talk about the, The models, right?

Mehmet: So this model where to be sitting exactly. Is it like also running on on on this, uh, decentralized storage and then it can, you know, analyze and get us the output. We want whatever the data lives.

Jean-Philippe: I [00:29:00] will answer first the, um, uh, first the idea of, uh, the, the jurisdiction and then the sort of data sovereignty, the, the, I'm making the argument that because we are using blockchain and because we're seeing, um, you know, pairs of keys, et cetera, that the users are actually in control of their data.

Jean-Philippe: We. The model, the legal model around data today is based on the fact that you're using a third party to manage that data. Uh, and, and, and, but, but, you know, law always catches up with technology. In this particular case, yes, there is a third party involved, but the third party doesn't see the data. The data is encrypted by the user keys and controlled by the user.

Jean-Philippe: So this is a little bit different, uh, and needs to be. Thought further, right? There's GDPR, there's HIPAA, there's all these regulations around different markets. I've studied them. [00:30:00] Um, and they all talk to the idea of store your data with third party software and, and, and how that is governed. They are meant to protect you, right?

Jean-Philippe: And then rightfully, but, um, I'd make the point that these are challengeable in the future because you can prove that users as full control. And this is a little bit like. Me putting the things in my own safe. Uh, now does it need to have rules around that to protect me from myself? maybe Um, and and I think there are different rules.

Jean-Philippe: They are more about key recovery or having ways to To. Um, allow people for mistakes and things that, you know, could happen, you know, and, and, and the Web3 industry is moving towards that as a kind of extraction. There are ways now where you can recover your, your seed phrases and things like that. [00:31:00] People are not familiar with seed phrases in, in, in the blockchain, in a crypto sort of account, you, you are, you're meant to have a seed phrase that secures your account, and then you have, you have key pairs that, that, um, you know, wallet addresses, etc.

Jean-Philippe: Um, people lose that sometimes. Well, it's, it's so safe and so secure that if you lose it, well, you lose everything. So obviously that's from a consumer experience perspective, that's not ideal. So, um, there are, there are other ways now to cribber cryptographically and have different, like we have two FA, um, uh, in the, in the normal way to weld a two factor authentication.

Jean-Philippe: We have different devices that can help us recover. We consider the phone as a secure enclave where. We can use phone to unlock something, et cetera. So, um, yes, there are, these technologies are being sort of adapted to the world of web three and the, the initial user [00:32:00] experience of having all these complex systems is kind of getting a little bit.

Jean-Philippe: You know, in the background now and, and, um, the way we are building our, our solution, um, you know, user experience wise, they actually don't need to know that it's built on blockchain from the app user perspective. They would onboard that just the same way as it would onboard a normal app. And they probably wouldn't realize that they have a crypto wallet open under, and then their data is actually stored on the blockchain and, or decentralized Systems like IPFS, Filecoin, where, you know, everything is actually distributed across servers and not in a single place.

Jean-Philippe: Um, so, um, that's, that's to answer the sort of jurisdiction, um, question. I think I'm very, very conscious of that. I mean, there's loads of, Regulation in the health space in Germany, if you have a, a UI that gives you a red, green, orange, uh, symbols on something, it's meant to be like advice, and then you can't give [00:33:00] advice.

Jean-Philippe: So you'd get a license for that. Um, so there's a, we, we know that we are going to start in jurisdictions that are maybe a little bit less, um, Restrictive and then we are gonna grow from there. And, and, and, um, that's why we are, we were in Dubai and, and I, and I'm seriously looking at, um, you know, potentially setting up in Dubai, um, because, um, I, I felt the environment there was, um, very much focused on innovation.

Jean-Philippe: Um, and, um, there was a big demand even from a government perspective. To, um, uh, look for different ways. And, you know, thinking outside the box is what I felt. It doesn't mean unregulated. There needs to be regulation in, in many ways. But, uh, there's also a more sort of, um, flexible playing field where, um, it's, it's, we try and we see, and then we put regulation where there really is need.

Jean-Philippe: Not like put all the regulations and, and, and stumper, [00:34:00] um, innovation. So that answers, I hope, your question on, on regulation.

Mehmet: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely Jean Philippe. And yeah, to your point, just from from my side, yeah, Dubai, they are trying to do this. Let's try to innovate. And then we will figure out like, you know, do proper regulation on that.

Mehmet: So they don't want to ban the creativity on the cost of, you know, Getting something really that can help people. So yeah, so that answers and it's, uh, it's good to know because you know, when I even thought about it and I asked it on purpose and this is for the audience guys, if use any of the social media, your data probably is not living within your country.

Mehmet: Yeah, uh, so it's, it's, you don't know actually, no, no one knows where the data is living. So this is, this is very, very important point there, uh, Jean Philippe. I asked you about the LLM model and you know, because of course we don't, we don't have to go into too much of the technical details, [00:35:00] but we're talking about a marriage, I would call it between the blockchain and distributed, uh, data, which is also.

Mehmet: Private and secure and to the, you know, getting the A. I. Part of it. So how you're imagining that part to be to be done

Jean-Philippe: imagining is the right word there because I kind of have to remind you that we're still bootstrapped and I need to raise a three seed round. So this is very much architecture in my head.

Jean-Philippe: Um, at this stage, we have not built the back end platform yet, but we do have a very clear plan on what we want to do, and we've identified partners and people that we want to work with. We've validated the stack, we figured out the feasibility study, so we're, we're ready to rock and roll as soon as we, we, um, Uh, get funding there.

Jean-Philippe: But, um, on the point of, um, AI, it's a very interesting point. And I've been very, uh, very, uh, I've been, [00:36:00] um, very attentive to, um, what happens recently with the Apple, for example. Apple's, uh, in my mind, uh, not a big corp, right? And so, uh, but, but they are, um, Not that they don't gather data, loads of data, of course, like everybody else.

Jean-Philippe: Um, but, um, they are a bit more conscious about this problem, and I was really curious to see how they were going to tackle this relationship with OpenAI, for example. And, uh, I spent quite a bit of time dissecting the architecture that they were putting in place, and, and the, um, the local models that run on the phone.

Jean-Philippe: And I, I can say with confidence, Confidence that they validated a lot of the stuff that I was thinking of doing and what I have in my head, I believe that the only way to do this is to actually run a small local model on your hardware device, more your phone, your tablet, et cetera, and have it talk to a bigger, uh, centralized and, um, [00:37:00] now there's, um, protocols and ways to do this called federated learning, uh, federated learning and gradient sharing.

Jean-Philippe: If you want to look that up. Um, for those who are interested, are interesting ways to have smaller models or, um, or distributed models work together across a network. Um, which means, um, normally what you do is inference, you have weights, um, uh, when the compute happens, when the model's learning some stuff.

Jean-Philippe: Um, you can actually, um, distribute those weights and update, uh, the weights of all the, um, smaller models on your network. through a centralized LLM, which, uh, will never see the actual data. All it will see is weights and inference data. Um, so there is, there is some cases, and I'm learning also, there are some cases where data can leak through, um, but it seems to be quite an interesting architecture [00:38:00] in terms of having the data stay at the local level.

Jean-Philippe: We called Edge AI, um, and, and run that there. And, and have a central LLM, you know, update all the way. So for our application, um, one thing is that we need, we need a bunch of things. We need a way to architect the data, store the data. Um, and we can do this in user session and we can, um, uh, back the data up on, on decentralized methods like IPFS, Filecoin.

Jean-Philippe: Um, and we can have what's called a RAG. So retrieval, uh, algorithm. So it's like a model within the model that is a task to, uh, fetch the data for you and prepare like a context window for the LLM to run on. Um, think about, you know, if you're looking at your health, you want to pull out your sleep, your nutrition, you want to, Pull out the related medical data, um, on a particular, um, [00:39:00] question that the user might have, um, and, or, uh, the right relevant history that you want to pull out, so it will, it would retrieve the data in a user session that user session will then the, once that session is closed, that user session is like any femoral colifemoral container that, that, that user session will get scrapped and deleted.

Jean-Philippe: The data is back, back where it belongs, backed up and, and all you're keeping is, um, the decentralized storage encrypted correctly, et cetera. So I am very much studying that, that decentralized architecture of, um, having, uh, local edge AI, uh, dated by central model.

Mehmet: Yeah, that's very interesting. And you know, uh, to your point, as you mentioned at the beginning, so, um, this is why you're, you're, uh, you're raising the funds now, but it looks very, very promising.

Mehmet: And I know for a fact, [00:40:00] because, you know, for people who they can go back to the introduction when, uh, Jean Philippe was showing us the demo. So there is a space seems also Jean Philippe to also. integrate, or let's say have the extendable reality part also as well within, within the product, right? Because, you know, when, when you showed us on the phone and it worked perfectly, I saw it by the way, live, not, not only on this recording.

Mehmet: So, so if I have my VR set, so, so even like from learning perspective, that could, could help me, you know, in learning the move and, you know, getting a better and maybe advising me to do it. to do the movement in this way, rather than that way. Because I remember you were explaining to me also that maybe the move can fit someone who's like this much tall rather than someone who is that much tall.

Mehmet: And it might fit someone who's that heavy in weight perspective, rather than someone who's like, why heavy?

Jean-Philippe: We [00:41:00] adjust it to your anatomy.

Mehmet: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but what, back to the VR point and the extendable reality point, um, I'm sure like you also have in mind some, some integration that would be working, you mentioned Apple and you know, yeah, Apple couple of weeks back, you know, they, they announced their AI strategy for some people, it was disappointment for other people was the best route to go to.

Mehmet: So, but how, how are you imagining, you know, the, the integration with the extendable reality? And I think you have something to show me.

Mehmet: Uh huh. Here you go.

Jean-Philippe: That's an Apple Vision Pro. Um, yeah, we, we are looking very much at, um, how we can integrate our app in, um, and I'm talking about the motion capture training app. Um, uh, on, on Apple Vision Pro. Um, we're still in development phase on that. Um, it will need a bit [00:42:00] more time before we we can release that.

Jean-Philippe: My vision is really that, um, we need to have the your digital self standing next to you, showing you how to do in the room next to you. So, um, one thing I forgot to mention is that our hardware provides haptic feedback. feedback. It means it, it buzzes you and taps you and vibrates you. That's also one of the reasons why we've gone down the route of actually electronic hardware, uh, rather than looking at, um, you know, and we have studied that, um, vision AI, for example, people say, Oh, why don't you have the phone in front?

Jean-Philippe: And then you use the camera and I've seen all these things that is possible these days. It is. But not really. Um, actually, uh, most of the camera, uh, vision, uh, hardware, uh, solutions are using, uh, what I call a 2D mesh. They're just picking up a few points, uh, in, in the image and, and extrapolating from there.[00:43:00]

Jean-Philippe: Um, it's still very challenging from a depth perspective. Perspective. Um, and, um, it, it is really subject to a lot of, um, issues with obstructions. If you have a body part in front of another body part, it's hard to guess what's happening behind. Um, and it's dependent on camera, uh, sort of, you know, angle, lighting conditions, et cetera, and your internet connections.

Jean-Philippe: Cause a lot of these work with a cloud. So you're sending photos of the videos of the lady in bikinis, um, to the cloud with all the risks that are, that are involved with that, um, to have it computed and brought back to your phone. Um, I don't find that model satisfactory today. I do think that it's definitely got.

Jean-Philippe: Legs in a very close future because it's moving very, very fast. So I quite sure that in two or three years we will have a valid solution there, but we can't launch [00:44:00] today with that technology. IMU sensors are way cheaper now. Uh, and they are, um, agnostic to your body shape or looks. Um, uh, all we transfer to a cloud for compute if we need to is, um, actual bone positions.

Jean-Philippe: Um, so no, it's, uh, it's a lot less risky from a privacy perspective. So back to the Apple Vision Pro. All VR devices in general. Um, my vision is really that you more and more, we're going to work with our digital selves. Our digital selves, the copy of ourself, where we can actually see things like, like, it's always easier to give advice to someone else, right?

Jean-Philippe: Cause you can see them and you can't see yourself. You need a mirror and then it kind of permutates and you got these mirror neuron inversion problems. Um, here you can see yourself, you can see what's right, you can see what's wrong. You can actually correct yourself. You get haptic feedback, which buzzes you, taps you.

Jean-Philippe: [00:45:00] Stops you before you make a mistake and injure yourself. Um, it's, it's, I, in my opinion, the best way forward and, um, yeah, it needs to move with the tech and with its time as well, like, you know, GoPro started with a particular tech and it developed a whole ecosystem of accessories to adjust to all the rabbit holes and the different habits of users, et cetera.

Jean-Philippe: That's where I see us going somewhere with SymbionIQ Labs and the hardware part of things, I see us developing a, an ecosystem of devices, not just what we're doing today, uh, but, but, you know, VR headset and maybe one day a camera system and maybe one day, uh, other accessories that you can strap up to a tennis racket or a baseball bat, or, uh, you can actually bring your 3D machine into your environment and climb on it and see yourself paddling away on a.

Jean-Philippe: On a, on a, uh, an exercise cycle or something like that. Why it's totally possible. [00:46:00]

Mehmet: Yeah.

Jean-Philippe: And so that's the environment I want to create.

Mehmet: Yeah. Great. You know, like you mentioned, you know, about having a digital twin and, uh, I mean, It is a health care digital twin. I mean, like, uh, something that can show me how from health care perspective I look like, uh, or what should I do to enhance things for which, which, which fantastic.

Mehmet: And I think Jean Philippe, like, you know, the thing, what the vision, I mean, for, for you, it tap a large market. Um, so. Because, you know, you have the part which is for the creators, right? So to show us how to do the movement, you have the part that can do the measurements. And, you know, from the sensors you just talked about and, you know, get the feedback to, to, to, to the health care providers.

Mehmet: So how big is that market, Jean Philippe? And I know it's huge, but, you know, I want to hear that from you. [00:47:00]

Jean-Philippe: I've actually narrowed it down to the digital fitness side of things. It's 69 billion. Uh, it's growing at 30 percent Kgar. So it'll be massive in 2027, 2028, the 30 billion. Um, and, um, yeah, there's, there's loads of subsets.

Jean-Philippe: I mean, obviously the, the, the healthcare market itself is bigger, but I, I look at it as being sick care. So I'm interested in, in the actual health span, longevity market that's growing. It's got a lot of different sub segment. Now you've got all these, um, you know, influencers in that space that are making headways like Brian Johnson, David Sinclair, um, uh, just to mention two of them that you've got, you know, people like Huberman labs.

Jean-Philippe: Who are really famous podcasts and are also have an amazing following of people. I mean, my bibles in that, uh, in that, um, space is books like, uh, [00:48:00] outlive by Peter retire. Um, that's, that's a really amazing, amazing book and it's very inspiring. He talks about medicines 3. 0, and then, you know, it's a heart surgeon, a cancer surgeon who is now converted to helping people increase their health span.

Jean-Philippe: Right. And in his definition is, is, uh, is big conservative in the space. He's not a biohacker. You know, people talk about biohacking these days. Um, but the reality of that space is we can engineer health now. Today, we have the technology to engineer health. What is lacking? Is data about yourself. You don't know yourself very well.

Jean-Philippe: We still have blanket advice for a lot of stuff. The only way to solve this is SymbionIQ. The actual middleware layer that allows you to bring all the data in one place so you can run the AI on this. Get your health compiler to advise you what you need to do next. What works for you, not what [00:49:00] works for the neighbors or the latest fad, the latest diet.

Jean-Philippe: Because some of that stuff doesn't work for some people, you know, you discover it yourself, right very much Um, a lot of it is still experimental,

Mehmet: right? And you know, I think also we we discussed this like offline when when you were here in dubai So the other thing is how much money a government they spend on health care, right?

Mehmet: And you know this, this amount of money that goes. And you mentioned something very interesting, Jean Philippe. And I was reading an article the other day about, you know, the whole trend of the longevity and you know, why people became like interested about it. And to your point about data. So, so the way medicine, I'm not a doctor, by the way, I didn't study medicine just for people to know.

Mehmet: So, but because, you know, uh, I was reading an interesting article, why sometimes, you know, uh, doctors say, Hey, like if you eat this, Uh, you can lose weight or if you do that, uh, you can avoid, uh, you know, [00:50:00] health, uh, heart diseases. Now, the fact is like, you know, it's, it's like kind of a, when you do the survey and if you take like small sample, you know, with a 20 people, how much accurate that would be if they tell you like, yeah, 60 people appear or 70 percent of people who do this, they, they, they will end up with that.

Mehmet: 20 people is nothing, right? And then even a hundred, one thousand. And the reason is like, there's this gap in the market to your point, Jean Philippe, like it ended up like the lack of data. And even if they have the data, it's like, Kind of kept the private same as you know, the the concept you mentioned about the social media So they they keep it for themselves.

Mehmet: They don't want to share it with anybody even they don't accept to sell the data as feeds So for you you're talking here about something that can benefit from government perspective, you know Decrease, you know the cost and you know my friends in the u. s They tell me about the crazy amount of money that goes to health care same here U.

Jean-Philippe: s is the biggest country in [00:51:00] health care spend

Mehmet: Exactly. So, uh, that's really, really like it's a big vision, uh, Jean Philippe, how much actually you, you know, you're planning today's already, I know that you are already in the phase, but like how much you need to, to, to, to get the version one complete and, and out.

Jean-Philippe: I'll come back to that. I just want to, I'm not a doctor either, right? But I do speak to a lot of doctors and, and, uh, we've got people who are, um, medical and healthcare experts on our board of advisor. Um, so, um, what I, what I can say is, um, um, from, from the U S is it's, it's the biggest spend and it's, it's, by far, Far and definitely not the healthiest country.

Jean-Philippe: Um, so that just should tell you a little bit about, uh, that, um, I think, um, sorry, I'm [00:52:00] losing my track a little bit. Um, if you, if you look at, um, the,

Jean-Philippe: Sorry, I'm just come back, come back on that.

Mehmet: Yeah. So, uh, you know, we're talking about, you know, how big the market is and you know, like about your vision and, um, you know, the, the, the amount, you know, you were raising, but you wanted to go back that, you know, in the U S it's the biggest healthcare market.

Jean-Philippe: Yeah. Yeah. No, you, you were, you were saying some interesting things around, um, the cost that being the cost of sick care.

Mehmet: Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Jean-Philippe: And you introduced governments and things like that. There's there's one thing I wanted to say there is that we very much think that, um, um, we we would like to be, um, we'd like to talk to governments to actually, um, see if our solution could be implemented, um, as part of their stack, because, um, I think [00:53:00] it's a big concern.

Jean-Philippe: Um, healthcare costs in many countries and. Um, there's, it's a very complex ecosystem out there. There's doctors, there's hospitals, there's insurance companies. There's loads of, uh, different platforms, but somewhere governments are on the pain end of all this. And there are ways to think outside the box and, and, and go straight to users, I think, and, and, um, uh, bypass some of that bureaucracy in between.

Jean-Philippe: Um, so, uh, my hope one day, and, and we're not ready for that. Today, but my hope one day is that our stack could be, uh, one of the options that can can select from to actually recommend users to stay healthier longer. Now you, you said, how much do I need to raise? And then you said, uh, you know, how realistically this is such a big hairy goal, uh, you know, let's [00:54:00] bring it back to what's realistic today.

Jean-Philippe: I'm totally with you. Uh, definitely. I mean, what we have today is. What we've got baked is a, uh, an app, which is a content creator tool for people to build their lessons and improve their physical sort of remote training solution. Remote training, let's call it like that. It's a remote training solution using 3D and motion captures.

Jean-Philippe: Um, what we are offering at the backend is an architecture for data collection, and data processing. It's a little bit like a gamification engine for health intervention. Some people have said you're like a TikTok for healthcare. Um, you know, that's a very big simplification and I don't, I don't know that I like TikTok much, so I'm not sure I would use that that phrase exactly, but yeah, yeah, it's some, somewhere the way to simplify.

Jean-Philippe: Um, I don't think we can do this alone. So my [00:55:00] goal is to work with partners. My goal is to find other startups who want to build on the same vision of ecosystem. So I'm looking for a nutrition app. I'm looking for a mental health app. I'm looking for maybe a doctor's appointment app or people who are working in that space.

Jean-Philippe: Are offering innovative and interesting solutions, but are conscious that data should be in the hands of the users rather than in another silo.

Mehmet: So

Jean-Philippe: I'm offering that and and then I'm, you know, let's find four or five people like that. And let's build that ecosystem together as like founding members. To build this ecosystem.

Jean-Philippe: I really think that's the way that I can. I today we're going to build a proof of concept of back end to support our app. So we will have some of the bones of that. And we have some interesting model in a nutshell that ecosystem is what it's [00:56:00] different modules. Right. A module for a social layer, a module for AI machine learning compute, a module to store your data in an encrypted and decentralized way, a module for monetization of your data.

Jean-Philippe: And we're talking partnerships already with people like Ocean Protocol. Um, they are already a monetization engine for AI data. On web three. Um, so their marketplace, you know, so you can monetize your data through them. So we're talking to them about how we integrate that into the picture. Um, what else do you want in there?

Jean-Philippe: I mean, we have governance model because you're building a network, so you need governance and protocol, you know, maintenance, et cetera. So, um, we're looking at a Dow structure for that because we want to give that protocol to the actual community. Think about it as a cooperative. I always come back to this image in New Zealand.

Jean-Philippe: We have, uh, something called Fonterra. It's a cooperative. It's the farmers getting together to sell the [00:57:00] milk. Why? Because I'm individually farmers, the power for marketing and all these things, they don't have the knowledge. Uh, they are smaller, you know, and they want to focus on producing, but they join a cooperative that does all that work for them.

Jean-Philippe: So my vision is that, so if you're, uh, you know, health app builder, you, you want to join the cooperative. And we maintain the network, offer the network for you, and so it's in the hands of the community. SymbionIQ Labs will build that backend, and we hand it over to the community, for the community to continue building, like Linux.

Jean-Philippe: The next is, is, is the child of Linux towards, but it's actually called the life of its own and it's got different versions, but it's got a core that gets, uh, you know, debugged and looked at and it's trusted because people know that, um, you can't hide anything in there because everybody's looking the many bears about is over it and it's trusted.

Jean-Philippe: So that's, [00:58:00] that's kind of. What I like about this idea is to put that, you know, those modules, that infrastructure out there in the open, open source. Um, and, and it's not, it's my vision of it as a nonprofit, it's, um, that all it does is automate things, distribute revenue. Automate things and and govern that the progress make sure that we're not breaching data privacy.

Jean-Philippe: We're not breaching, um, our promises to the users, etcetera, etcetera. That's why we would expand ourself from it so that we can create what I called, um, you know, um, credible neutrality. Credible neutralities, SymbionIQ Labs is a customer of that entity. And that's all it is. That entity now belongs to the community.

Mehmet: Fantastic.

Jean-Philippe: That's what we want to build. So right now we'd like to raise 3. 5 million us. I get to the number in the end. [00:59:00] Um, and that, that actually, um, is for. growing the team by five people, delivering the actual hardware software part of our, um, motion creation lab. Um, so the, the, the remote training tool, um, it's called NeoMove and the hardware is called NeoTracker and the backend platform is called NeoXR.

Jean-Philippe: So it's got a, it's got a Neo feel to it. Um, and, um, yeah, that'll, that'll take us to, uh, go to market launch. So we're still pre seed. This is a pre seed round.

Mehmet: Amazing. Uh, finally, Jean Philippe, and to people get, you know, in touch and maybe if someone may be also interested to invest, how they can reach out to you.

Jean-Philippe: Well, I'm a very, very, very easily findable on the internet. I put the, uh, uh, at SymbionIQ, that's actually the handle on Twitter. It's a handle on telegram. It's the handle on, uh, Everything I'm on, um, LinkedIn, you can [01:00:00] find me and DM me on LinkedIn very easily. Um, you can go to do, do, do symbiotic.com. That is our website.

Jean-Philippe: There's, um, a bit of a blurb there, and then you can actually register to be in the early, uh, early bird, um, group. So people are interested in, in, in receiving offers and, and knowing when we're ready to launch and things like that. Um, they can just join the, that, uh, that list.

Mehmet: That's great. Uh, Jean Philippe, like, you know, like it's, it's one of the episodes that is rich, rich, rich, rich, not only in, in ideas, but also like actionable, uh, insights within the healthcare and what you're building is really something I believe it's, it's, it's, it's needed.

Mehmet: It's not like, you know, just ambitious idea. So it's something that, All we need, let's say pain, um, you know, because everyone wants to be healthy at the end of the day, and everyone want to live more and want to see like their grand, [01:01:00] uh, son and granddaughters and, and then, you know, stay in healthy shape.

Mehmet: They don't want to rely on, uh, someone to help them when they become older. They want to stay in, in, in, in good shape also as well. So this is why personally, I believe. Uh, this is a great and huge need in this and thank you for sharing this and I I'm sure like, you know, hopefully Um, maybe through this podcast, but you are active very active on linkedin I know this and very active on on on the internet in general So i'm pretty sure that you're gonna get the support you're looking for john philippe.

Mehmet: Um, and this is usually Uh, how I end my episode. So this is for the audience. If you just discovered this podcast, by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoy it. This is really one of the, you know, great exists and greatest episode. Oh, I like all my episodes of course, but this is really special because I am, you know, versed in, in healthcare and making people's life more, more, uh, you know, healthy in general and better.

Mehmet: So if you like this episode, you know, [01:02:00] subscribe to the podcast, share it with your friends and colleagues. And if you are one of the loyal followers who keep coming and sending me their messages and comments and suggestions, thank you for doing that. Keep doing this, please. I like to read all your suggestions.

Mehmet: And as I say, always, we'll meet again very soon. Thank you. Bye bye.