healthbase - the next steps

It has been a few months since we began working on integrating blockchain technology into healthbase and since its conception the project has seen substantial progress with more noteworthy developments underway.

To recap a bit (healthbase medium blog), healthbase aims to integrate blockchain technology and create a framework that would 

• address the issues concerning the management of patients’ health-related data
• and advance medical research by providing easy and secure access to anonymized health data like never before.

With the progress being made, we felt it would be a great idea to publish some updates on the project and outline the future strategies healthbase will be undertaking in 2018. 

1. The need for ICO regulations

2017 was the year when the term ICO (initial coin offering) stopped being a buzzword and went mainstream.  Exponential rise in the value of Bitcoin (currently priced at $13952.40) and Ethereum (currently priced at $1401) has led to a lot of attention all over the world. Many upcoming blockchain projects aggressively embraced this new form of financing. ICOs traditionally involve the issuance of digital tokens to investors in exchange for bitcoin or ethereum and raising a substantial amount of money to finance their operations.
Some noteworthy ICOs from 2017 that successfully managed to raise capital in the millions (IoTCoreSoft, 2017) are 

• Tezos ($232 Million)
• Filecoin ($250 Million)
• Status ($7 Million)
• Bancor ($153 Million)
• EOS ($183 Million)

The lack of financial regulatory frameworks overseeing an ICO meant that businesses could raise substantial amounts of seed funding without any oversight from fiduciary regulatory bodies. With a move aiming to protect investors from fraud, countries have finally begun releasing regulations on this new form of raising financial capital. For instance - 

• On July 25, 2017, the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was the first financial regulator to announce that the issuance of digital tokens would be subject to U.S. federal securities law going forward (SEC - Investor Bulletin, 2017). 
• China and South Korea have effectively banned ICOs as they believe scammers can use ICOs to defraud investors (Bitcoin Market Journal, 2017).
• Countries such as The Isle of Man, Estonia, Switzerland, Canada (subject to regulations on a case-by-case basis), Israel, Japan, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, and Australia are allowing ICOs to take place while subjecting them to regulations (Bitcoin Market Journal, 2017). 

In light of these developments, we at healthbase are currently involved in discussions which would ensure our ICO follows the regulations from a legal, tax, accounting, know your customer (KYC), and business due diligence perspective.

2. Forging new partnerships

We are looking to forge new partnerships with experts in different fields in order to
- be able to cater to the exact needs of different target audiences and develop the software accordingly;
- acquire additional expertise in fields such as medicine, software development, legal matters, economics/marketing;
- acquire supporters, venture capitalists, and crypto-investors;  
- and spread the word regarding healthbase and its awesome benefits for its future users/participants.

While these are some of the important steps we have taken so far, in parallel, we are also currently 

1. making progress on launching a new version of our website, 
2. designing a roadmap that details the goals and visions of our project, 
3. creating a first release version of our white paper,
4. creating a video for marketing purposes that explains the core objectives of healthbase and what it sets out to do.

If you want to stay updated on healthbase, why not join our community via one of our channels? We would definitely love to hear from you! You will find us on the below channels:
1. Facebook — www.facebook.com/healthbase.digital 
2. Twitter — www.twitter.com/healthbase1 
3. Telegram — https://t.me/joinchat/Fsvr7g48R1utm-ajn0jaTw 
4. Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/healthbase-digital

Reference:

1. Top 5 successful Blockchain ICOs of 2017. (2017, November 15). Retrieved January 10, 2018, from https://www.iotcoresoft.com/iot-knowlegde-center/top-5-successful-blockchain-icos-of-2017
2. Investor Bulletin: Initial Coin Offerings. (2017, July 25). Retrieved January 10, 2018, from https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-and-bulletins/ib_coinofferings
3. ICO Regulations by Country. (2017, December 18). Retrieved January 10, 2018, from https://www.bitcoinmarketjournal.com/ico-regulations/