The precision medicine and biotechnology company Macrogen (CEO Kap-Seok Yang, www.macrogen.com) announced on September 17 that it had been granted a U.S. patent for its blockchain-based data-sharing technology. The patent for a ‘data-sharing method based on the plurality of blockchains (patent No. 10417219)’ was jointly filed with the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) by Psomagen and Macrogen.
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The precision medicine and biotechnology company Macrogen (CEO Kap-Seok Yang, www.macrogen.com) announced on September 17 that it had been granted a U.S. patent for its blockchain-based data-sharing technology. The patent for a ‘data-sharing method based on the plurality of blockchains (patent No. 10417219)’ was jointly filed with the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) by Psomagen and Macrogen.
The registered U.S. patent is a technology that combines a token economy system with a blockchain platform to facilitate active data sharing and transactions. Using this technology, users who wish to purchase data can easily make payments with a point or token which is automatically distributed to the brokerage platform commission and provider reward by the ‘smart contract’. Individuals who have consented to provide and distribute their data will obtain additional rewards not only for the initial data-sharing process but also for each data transaction thereafter.
Using this technology, the ownership of healthcare and genomic data that hospitals and/or testing institutions had is returned to the individuals. This creates a blockchain-based transaction environment in which data providers directly interact with users. Ultimately, this technology will create an ecosystem where individuals can freely exercise their rights at every stage of the healthcare big data value chain—from generation and storage to searching and utilization.
The healthcare big data distribution platform with this technology not only allows individuals to own and manage their healthcare data but also make profits from data sharing. This system induces the active participation of data providers, creating a virtuous cycle in which larger amounts of high-quality healthcare data are accumulated at a faster pace. In other words, highly useful, high-quality healthcare big data can be collected and integrated more quickly.
Psomagen, which jointly filed the patent with Macrogen, plans to apply the technology to the United States DTC market. The company plans to encourage the voluntary participation of individual users to quickly build high-quality healthcare big data and take the lead in the platform business in the U.S. market.
“The United States is the fastest-growing market in the world for the concept of individual health sovereignty and DTC genetic testing,” said Ryan W. Kim, the CEO of Psomagen. “We expect these market characteristics to help Psomagen’s healthcare big data distribution platform take off quickly, allowing the company to build high-quality healthcare big data in a short time,” he added.
Macrogen’s blockchain data-sharing technology has been registered in Korea in August 2018, followed by a U.S. patent in September 2019. Additional patents are currently pending in Europe, Japan, China, and Singapore.
Meanwhile, according to Kalorama Information and Global Market Insights, the global DTC market is expected to grow to approximately USD 2.5 billion by 2025. The U.S. DTC market, which accounts for 72% of the current DTC market worldwide, is expected to grow to over USD 1.8 billion by 2025.
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