DECENTRALIZED AI DECENTRALIZED AI

The Next Frontier For Intelligent Systems

What role will decentralized AI play in the Web3 ecosystem, and how might this differ from the centralized AI models that are currently prevalent in many Web 2.0 platforms?

Decentralized AI is the future of intelligent systems, and it’s set to shake up the status quo in the Web3 ecosystem. Unlike centralized AI models that concentrate data control in the hands of a single entity, decentralized AI leverages blockchain technology to distribute data control across a network of nodes, making it a more secure and accountable option. This new era of AI will empower users to take control of their data and will lead to exciting new possibilities, including privacy-focused applications, trust-based supply chain management, and collaborative data sharing. Get ready for a smarter, more equitable future powered by decentralized AI in the Web3 world!

Which industry trends for 2023 do you predict will have the most impact on the emerging tech space? Which areas are likely to see the most growth, and which ones are likely to face challenges?

Undoubtedly, the field of zero-knowledge (ZK), data science, optimism, and infrastructure will play a significant role in the future. While these areas may not be considered emerging, they serve as the backbone of our networks and are increasingly gaining recognition for their fundamental importance. As more people become aware of what goes on “under the hood,” the significance of these areas will become more widely understood.

ZK, rollups, and Starkware are gaining a lot of attention in the blockchain space. Looking beyond the hype, what are some practical use cases for these technologies, and how do they differ from each other in terms of performance and security?

I could list countless applications, but I’ll focus on my area of expertise. In the banking sector, decentralized AI can help to solve and streamline complex intra-bank transactions such as repurchase agreements or swaps. I believe that finance is a crucial aspect of the next evolution of our society, and I’d like to give it a special mention. By utilising zero-knowledge technology, we can reduce or even eliminate fees in the Ethereum network, which will significantly increase the speed and usage of blockchain technology.

What are the biggest challenges businesses in the blockchain space face when it comes to scaling their projects?

Undoubtedly, effective cash flow generation and smart spending during fundraising are key to success. However, it’s important to note that having the right team in place is also critical. The team is the heart and soul of a project, and having the right people with the right skills and experience can make all the difference in achieving success.

How do you evaluate the fundraising and treasury management strategies of different projects? What metrics do you look at, and what red flags do you avoid?

I mainly look for red flags such as lack of transparency or unclear strategies. Key metrics I analyze include burn rate, cash balance, and funding sources, while keeping in mind the project’s goals and market conditions. Sometimes you can also do a quick analysis on the backbone of the project judging their capable and advisors.

Growth hacking is a popular term in the startup world, but how does it apply to the blockchain space? In what ways can growth hacking through organic methods be more sustainable and effective in the long-term, compared to relying on bots for short-term gains?

The term “growth hacking” is broad and can be applied in any industry. In the Web3 space, it involves the constant effort to counteract the use of bots or lazy human effort. To be effective in this context, it’s important to have a sectorneutral understanding of the blockchain sphere and a basic understanding of Web2 marketing approaches.

Bots are not necessarily the enemy, as they can serve a valuable purpose in protection. However, relying solely on bots for growth does not guarantee long-term growth or retention. It’s important to consider a more holistic approach that encompasses genuine engagement and commitment from users for sustainable growth in the Web3 space.

Masterblox offers its own in-house growth hacking solution - tell me more about this.

We have been researching and developing our growth hacking strategies for years now. It takes the efforts of several analysts and 24/7 monitoring to refine our approach. Our track record is something we take great pride in, with successful partnerships with industry giants such as BNB, Chainlin among others. Our techniques have been proven to boost engagement and enhance user acquisition. Our growth hacking strategies have the potential to take a new project from start to finish with ultimate success, or to bring about the resurgence of an industry giant.

the chemical and health industry, we see no other way than pushing for more sustainable and digital solutions THROUGH STARTUP SUCCESS ةئشانلا ةكشرلا حاجن للاخ نم ةيمقرلا ةحصلا وحن هجوتلا

“ Q&A - ةبوجأ و ةلئسأ ISSUE 12 - 12 رادصإلا - 103

Lisa Tschalenko is leading the digital health ecosystem at 5-HT Digital Hub - Europe’s fastest growing ecosystem for chemistry & health. In this interview with Matthew Calleja she discusses their role in fostering growth within the startup ecosystem.

Can you give an overview of the digital innovation landscape in the health and chemistry industries in Germany?

One of the biggest German-wide initiatives is the Digital Hub Initiative (de:hub) which was founded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). It includes 12 digital hubs, each with a specific focus area and structure. 5-HT is the only hub for chemistry and health. The aim is to be located close to the industry and therefore enable faster innovation through startups. Together with the Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI) the Digital Hub Initiative represents itself internationally during various big conferences like WebSummit in Lisbon, VivaTech in Paris and Slush in Helsinki.

Can you talk about the impact 5-HT Digital Hub has had in promoting and fostering digital innovation in these industries?

We were founded almost 5 years ago and have since established a global network of 350+ startups in 50+ countries, as well as numerous industry partners, investors, academia and partner hubs. We support established companies in their entire innovation process and bring companies and innovative startups together in a perfect fit. Our impact is huge with 200+ matches having initiated projects within our growing open ecosystem.

How does the company introduce established companies to the startup ecosystem, and what benefits does this provide for both parties?

We strongly believe in the pull approach, meaning we assess with our chemical and pharmaceutical industry partners what focus areas they want to target and based on that we enable exclusive matchmaking between the industry and the relevant startups. We enabled over 300 matches and more than 30 co-development projects between those parties.

Can you share some examples of successful collaborations between established companies and startups that have arisen through the hub’s efforts?

In the five years since our foundation we have succeeded to achieve more than two hundred matches between startups and industrial partners. Unfortunately, many of them are confidential. One of the latest is a project that we have initiated and conducted with pharmaceutical company Schwabe and the startup Pathmate. We have scouted globally to find suitable startups for Schwabe, and a mutual selection process along with scouting through 5-HT, Pathmate has developed an application as a digital add-on to Schwabe’s pharmaceutical product.

How does 5-HT Digital Hub prioritise sustainability in its efforts to drive digital innovation in health and chemistry industries?

Sustainability is our third key focus topic that we work strongly with. Particularly in the chemical industry we see no other way than pushing for more sustainable solutions. We have witnessed great collaborations with our founding member BASF and one of our startups Carbon Minds in shaping the roadmap for the Co2 footprint.

Can you discuss some of the challenges the company has faced in promoting digital innovation in these industries and how it has overcome them?

Chemistry and health are 2 industries that generally speaking are more conservative. Digital innovation is very interesting to the industries but takes a lot of time to get all players on board and be implemented. Sometimes we have to support the innovation of processes rather than pushing a digital solution onto an old expired process. We’ve overcome this problem partially.

Although we can’t change the rhythm of the industry in one night, still we can, and are, supporting them in taking faster decisions. With our well-known matchmaking program “The X-linker” - which we ran for the chemistry industry and separately also for the pharma industry - we have been able to introduce digital startup solutions from all around the world, very exclusively and efficiently to our corporate partners. The next one is in March for “Healthtech in Pharma”. Feel free to join the pitch session.

Can you give us a glimpse into the future of digital innovation in the health and chemistry industries, and the role you see 5-HT Digital Hub playing in shaping that future?

Digital innovation in chemistry and health in Germany is on its way to further shape the industries, but there is room to accelerate the speed of transformation. Especially in clinics, hospitals and other servicers we see a backlog of digitalisation that we want to address.

The German Krankenhauszukunftsgesetz enables clinics to get federal money for their digital transformation. We participate actively in both our focus industries to bring together suitable partners so that innovative digital solutions can be realised at an appropriate speed.

As the leading hub for digital chemistry and health, we have a vital role in shaping both industries, especially as our open ecosystem of relevant industry players continuously grows and enables collaboration between pharma and chemistry. The same is true for pharmaceutical companies.

In the wake of the 2020 pandemic, the MedTech landscape has shifted drastically for both recruiters and employees. Giovanni Lauricella, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Lifeblood Capital offers sage advice to those seeking to navigate this fast-paced sector.

What are the biggest challenges when it comes to recruiting within the MedTech sector right now?

Overall, the act of “recruiting” has been too democratised.The word is overused these days, especially in the healthcare industryhowever, LinkedIn and other employment websites can be powerful tools, if used correctly.

The advent and high volume use of LinkedIn “job postings,” and the ability to advertise that a company is hiring, has empowered hiring managers to create white noise in the candidate market.

This leads to exhausting hiring processes. Instead the interview process should be educational for both the hiring managers and candidates, it should be well-prepared for, concise, and respectful of the time that all of those are investing into the two-way-street process. The democratisation of recruiting has stripped the professionalism of the process and created white noise with frustrated hiring managers and candidates.

The second biggest challenge, in my opinion - and I can only speak from a MedTech startup perspective, is executives, hiring managers, and startups as a whole over-utilising “consultants” and waiting too long to internalise the function to add strength to their team.

In short, the MedTech industry is a highly regulated industry that takes a great deal of time and money for proper development. Taking shortcuts in a regulated industry has limited success stories.

How has the health tech industry shifted since the pandemic?

This is a big and dynamic question. My short answer is that the pandemic made the world aware, focused, and conscious of the healthcare industry - not only those who work in the industry or patients in need, but the entire world. It also brought significant attention to supply chains, access to materials and finished products, the fact that our modern world is still susceptible to mass viruses and there is a need for vaccines, and overall proactive healthcare has been increased given that those who suffered from comorbidities and the elderly were most affected. Clearly, there have been aspects of everyday-lifestyles that have been altered, of which many will be with us to stay and have changed our culture as humans.

What does the journey from startup to success look like?

Incredibly painful. I have spent the past two years capturing these stories from MedTech entrepreneurs and investors on my podcast MedTech Money. MedTech startups need to raise capital and build teams to hit their milestones. And, then they have to repeat this equation over and over until they succeed as a stand-alone company, go public, or get acquired (or fail). Raising capital is painful, building and retaining teams and leading people is highly complex, and you have to do this all within a regulated industry. How do you define success? There are many success stories out there that do not end with a new technology making it to help improve healthcare. How has talent acquisition changed as new generations enter the workforce - what goes into attracting and retaining a great hire?

We live in a data-centric, social media world now, and talent acquisition has changed greatly when it comes to attracting strangers (non-connections to the hiring team), while not changing at all when it comes to building teams with human relationships. Talent acquisition is all about who can use the media-centric tools of today to tell and share the most optimal and engaging story. If you dissect that sentence, there is a tremendous amount of effort, communication, and organisation that goes into having the ability to share the most optimal and engaging story.

At the same time, talent acquisition as a service is often a tertiary line of ability to attract talent because it is seen as a high expense by most inexperienced hiring managers that do not have a grasp of the holistic or long-term value that a talent acquisition partner brings to a company as a support structure.

The first two lines of attracting talent these days are: (1) utilising the hiring company’s own network - which is often successful given the personal relationships and trust, and I, personally, support this avenue of attracting talent as the first line of building a team. And, (2) social media position postings, which are mainly on LinkedIn. These can work, and there are countless stories of proof. However, overall these postings are usually poorly written, unengaging, create more white noise than efficiency, and mostly end up creating a highly frustrated hiring company and candidate market.

What emerging tech trends and innovations do you predict will have the most profound effect on the healthcare industry over the next few years?

The boring stuff that not many people want to talk about. There are and will be profound technologies being developed that will affect the healthcare industry in the future. However, as long as we are a regulated industry of devices and biopharma, these technologies have a long time in the development, review, regulatory approval, and commercial phases before they touch patients. For example, transcatheter heart valve technologies.

While the industry is fairly well-communicated at this point, and TAVI (transcatheter aortic valve implants) is a mainstream business, there is still only one FDA approved transcatheter mitral valve technology in the

Incorporating networking and relationship management outside of your day-to-day tasks of the position will give you an insurance policy for your career and open up opportunities that you cannot imagine alone.

Innovation is outpacing healthcare economics and regulatory systems.

United States. And, that is MitraClip, which was approved in 2013. Meanwhile, there are seemingly hundreds of heart valve startups innovating in this space.

This market will take another decade or more, and these “profound” technologies that we hear about like braincomputer-interfaces (BCIs) fall into the same category. They are being developed now and we won’t get “used to them” as a society for a decade or more to come.

Think about surgical robotics and the amount of acquisitions that have taken place and the money thrown into this market. I could be wrong with this statistic by this point, however, robotic surgeries are still less than 10% of all surgeries that take place.

Yet, from an innovation perspective this space is exciting and hot. What will affect the healthcare industry the most is when we settle down and understand how we use data, positively impact clinical workflows, make efficiencies with how hospital and procedural payment systems function, and properly align our healthcare systems that are operational today with commercially available technologies and make them accessible to the masses.

In short, innovation is outpacing healthcare economics and regulatory systems. Once we do a better job with what we have, we will be able to incorporate the exciting and game-changing technologies faster.

What can professionals do to adjust and stay relevant in such a fast-paced landscape?

Network. Professionals must incorporate networking into their professional workflow. Relationships need to be nurtured or else they fade away and in an ever-changing world, networks need to be expanded.

I often hear about the person who was in a comfortable position for five, 10, 15, 20 years - in a period of their life that was on cruise control. Then something happened to shake that up - they were restructured or fired - and find themselves looking for a new position and chapter in their life in a fairly desperate manner. They did not manage historical relationships, go to networking events, or ask their employer to send them to conferences, and so they start scrambling when they come to need a network of professional friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.

Having networks is a powerful resource to have - in all facets of life. Incorporating networking and relationship management outside of the day-to-day tasks of your position will give you an insurance policy for your career and open up opportunities that you cannot imagine alone.

Your network will enable you to learn what is happening in the world and industry so that you can quickly adjust to the changing times and stay relevant when the time comes to be relevant.

Innovation without adoption in health care is like in so many industries – wasted innovation. Andy Bleaden, Communities Director at ECHAlliance shares his experience on using a network of Digital Health Ecosystems across the globe to connect, convene, and amplify change.

ECHAlliance has over the last 12 years built a network of over 1000 member organisations, 23,000 digital health experts and brought them together in a network of over 75 ecosystems from Argentina to Zimbabwe to Australia.

We use this network to connect, convene, amplify and accelerate innovation. It is both a research network (with over 300 Universities and research institutes); an implementation network targeting purchasers and providers in healthcare in over 120 hospitals and 150 government agencies; and also a network that is rooted in the grassroots of over 90 patient organisations alongside 150+ networks and associations.

These tackle common issues and match need and solution – leading with the need. Bringing all the stakeholders of health together helps to break down silos and transform healthcare as well as create economic opportunity by matching needs and solutions.

This is done topic-by-topic, on a permanent basis across our 75 Ecosystems, ensuring patients are at the centre.The goal of an ecosystem event is to bring together stakeholders from across the region or country - from the need and from the solution side on a specific topic: with a diversity of verticals ranging from wellbeing and diabetes to digital health solutions or mental health.

The agenda and format varies from ecosystem-to-ecosystem, but it usually leads with a need, showcases best practices, and includes some parts for collaborative workshops and/or pitching opportunities. It is here silos get broken down, connections take place, and collaboration can begin. As many of the stakeholders do not know each other, or their needs/solutions, these ecosystems literally connect them together to look for ways to scale up and work collaboratively or develop new projects.

As an example in Malta, if the topic was ‘diabetes’, we would ensure we have a gathering with input from patients on what they need in terms of information, services, and solutions following a diagnosis. We would hear from their carers or family members, as well as health and care professionals on what solutions and products they need.

Policy makers could detail what they need to know for modelling services and tenders and planning for future care needs. Researchers could outline what information and data they need access to - all leading with a need and many of whom have never met.

This is the first level of connection to take place - following which the format is flipped and we could look at what “good” looks like across Malta in this topic. The best in patient support, virtual care networks, primary care excellence, hospital programme, research and projects as well as what companies have to offer in this field. Again many of these groups have never met and are unaware of this best practice. We would then join “Need” and “Solution” and see where better collaboration could occur, alongside further uptake of solutions and innovation and potential joint working. Lastly, we could invite our international network expertise from Denmark or Romania into this field.

It is also an opportunity to bring in examples from across the wider network of ECHAlliance international ecosystems or members with similar challenges but successful innovation in other countries.

The ecosystems are responsible for taking the leadership to organise their own events that suit their priorities and agenda, but as part of our network, we can offer support and assistance where needed.

We have also developed Thematic Innovation Ecosystems (TIEs), which target cross-border topics using our well-established and successful multi-stakeholder approach that places the patient/ citizen at the centre of this initiative.

The purpose again is to match needs and solutions on specific topics affecting different countries. Each Thematic Innovation Ecosystem is led by one or two ECHAlliance members and/or ecosystems.

What happens at a TIE event?

The usual structure of a Thematic Innovation event is: What is the need? (for the patient,carer, policy and health providers).

What does good look like? (Best practices, research and policy).

How to match need and solution? (Discussion and planning for potential collaboration/projects)

Each part counts on 1 to 3 speakers that briefly present their needs, best practices or solutions to the topic covered.

What these have given us is a much greater platform for our members to work across borders and connect needs/solutions and collaborate in multiple locations. As an example - our Mental Health Thematic Innovation Ecosystem has led to input from patient groups, health care professionals, care organisations, researchers and policy makers around the area of substance misuse (as we would in normal geographical ecosystems), however this time, with input from Montreal in Canada; the Highlands and Islands in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Oulu in Finland, South Denmark and Rheinland/Bonn in Germany.

We could then match these to solutions in some of these countries whether they be digital health apps, user group support or elements of social prescribing. What was important to recognise was not just to connect and convene the need and solution but to link up and connect those from the first group and look for potential areas to further collaborate in future.

This could be amplifying learning exchanges or potential new projects to help collaboration using local, regional, national or even European Funding. An even bigger surprise was the ability for these ecosystems to actually connect up members from the same area who had never met before - as happened in Oulu and accelerate collaboration locally.

This ability of ECHAlliance to Connect, Convene, Accelerate and Amplify is how we have built our global community and remains as resonant now as it did when we started our first ecosystem.