Projects Serie: meet David Hawing, Pact Care CTO/ Co-founder
On the day of the date we present a new interview to the CTO and Co-Founder of Pact Care, David Hawing.
He will tell us what this union between IOTA and the world of health is about.
Ezequiel Outon
Writer & Editor, IOTA Hispano
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Tell us a little about your background. How is the team made up?
We have a great, international team consisting of talented and energetic individuals, each with their own unique skillsets due to their different backgrounds.André Fialho has a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from MIT / IST and was previously working for Philips Healthcare as a strategist and market analyst in population health. Chao Zhou, MD Ph.D., is a practicing physician-scientist in the Netherlands who helps to ensure that whatever is built truly provides value to the user in a safe manner. Sebastian Fuhrhop, who is a German developer experienced in eCommerce and IOTA development. Finally, myself, David Hawig, I am a German industrial engineer and self-taught coder, who worked on different healthcare related research projects as well as on start-up projects.We all met over the internet early 2017 and because of a shared vision about health data and how new technologies could increase its value, we started working in our free time on Florence, a 24/7 available AI-powered virtual health coach. Florence is now often mentioned next to larger companies (e.g. Babylon Health or Ada Health) who are starting to make an impact on health care globally also by leveraging software and mobile technologies. Because of a conviction, we can do an even better job with the right people supporting us, we founded PACT Care.
When and how was your first approach to IOTA?
By the end of 2017, we realized the amount and extent of the problems in healthcare globally due to data being locked away in data silos. For example, almost every company that develops software, including those who develop chatbots in health care, does so with their own data storage solution. This severely impedes the transfer of information.
We have experienced first-hand, both from the patient as well as the provider’s perspective, how important timely and judicious exchange of health information is. In some cases, it saves lives, literally. So, we considered decentralization of data storage a must. We then started to explore the different options that would enable this. At that time, IOTA seemed quite promising. We know there are a lot of Ethereum based healthcare ICOs at the moment, but do users really want to pay for sending their healthcare data?
