Hey Hackers,

EU-funded startup Data Lake has been nominated in HackerNoon's annual Startup of the Year awards in Warsaw, Poland!

We would be beyond grateful if you could vote for us here: https://hackernoon.com/startups/europe/europe-warsaw-poland

Read more about us below to understand the amazing things we’re working on, and why we believe we deserve your vote.

Meet Data Lake

Founded by two medical doctors, Data Lake is an EU-funded startup working to solve two of the biggest issues in medical research today: access to - and bias in - medical data.

Humanity is on the brink of some incredible developments in medical technologies and treatments - from AI algorithms detecting cancer to nano-robotics and smart sensors, we are looking at a future in which patient outcomes are hugely impacted by medical technology.

Having access to high-quality and representative data, however, is of vital importance to the design, training, and implementation of these technologies.

Up until recently, however, there was no way for researchers to legally and ethically access the datasets needed to build these incredible developments. Thanks to new EU legislation and our tools, we have created a way for researchers to do just that!

Based on ethically-gathered digital consents, Data Lake enables patients to provide access to their medical data to the research entities and startups who are building our medical future.

Along with the Donate Your Data Foundation and more than 40 patient and healthcare organizations, we have launched a global medical data donation platform that will soon allow anyone in the world to donate their medical data to science.

My Role

My name is Wojciech Sierocki, co-founder and CEO of Data Lake. I am a medical doctor by training but have previously founded several startups including ‘Treatment with a Mission’, at the time one of Poland’s largest NGOs operating in Africa.

From the start of the COVID pandemic, I worked as a physician in the Emergency Department of the HCP Hospital in Poznan, Poland.

While being able to make an immediate impact in someone’s life as a doctor was something I found immensely satisfying, seeing the impact of data on COVID outcomes I soon realized that my greater potential resided in building systems that could impact hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people.

Thus, along with my co-founder Dr. Ligia Kornowska, the idea for an international medical data donation program and Data Lake was born.

How We're Disrupting the Medical Research Industry

We have built an ethical medical data access layer that allows medical researchers (who are performing pro-patient research) to study large amounts of medical data that has previously never been studied.

Based on the informed consent of patients who have the right to revoke it at any time, we can connect researchers to multi-source data sets that can be incrementally and regularly updated.

This can take various forms, including the creation of privacy-focused patient registries that allow researchers to connect with patients suffering from ultra-rare diseases, as well as enabling a new era of digital clinical trials.

Standing Out from The Crowd

Securing access to medical data has been attempted - and failed - before. This has primarily been due to two factors - first, previous attempts have required patients and the general public to gain access to and then upload their medical data.

For anyone who has ever tried to get their medical files, they’ll know just how difficult a proposition that is.

Additionally, previous attempts have not sufficiently taken into account the aspects of privacy and transparency, often asking people to trust them regarding how and when their data is being used.

We have solved both of these issues, using technology that allows for direct integration with hospitals for the transfer of medical records based on the express consent of patients, given digitally and recorded with distributed ledger technology.

In short, we do all the heavy lifting by taking on both all of the legal and operational burdens. What really makes our approach different, however, is the focus on openness and transparency.

We don’t want patients to have to trust that their consent (or revocation of consent) has been received, and therefore we chose blockchain technology to ensure a verifiable and trust-less system.

By recording operations of consent on a public blockchain - without personally-identifiable information of course - we have removed the need for trust from the system entirely, allowing patients to know beyond a shadow of a doubt what their consent status is, and whether their medical data is being used for research or not.

Our system not only respects patient agency and privacy, but it reduces the risk for researchers who know absolutely whether they have permission to study a dataset or not.

Our Predictions/Thoughts on the HealthTech Industry in 2023

As with many industries, the healthcare industry will become increasingly reliant upon and driven by data in the coming years. A.I. algorithms, machine learning, and smart sensors are already online and assisting in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and with continuous and parallel innovations in nanorobotics and 3D printing, we are looking at a Science Fiction level of healthcare being possible within the next few years.

Our main prediction - and something we are working to ensure - is that the ethical sourcing, storage, and analysis of data will become an increasing trend.

Before we started and before key EU legislation was put in place, the idea of “consent-based data donation” was foreign to many people in the healthcare industry.

Thanks in part to our efforts, we are hearing it talked about more and more at conferences and in the media. We believe that engaging people in what happens with their medical data and ensuring they are stakeholders is key to unlocking a new wave of medical innovation.

We are convinced that you can have both privacy and innovation, and we believe the coming year will prove us right.

What word defines the state of HealthTech in 2023?

It’s hard to define in just one word, but we’ll give you three: “exciting, but critical.” The technological innovations we’ve talked about previously are incredibly exciting when you consider their potential for improving quality of life, patient outcomes, and ultimately, saving lives.

We’re not exaggerating when we say we’re on the brink of being able to cure and treat many diseases previously considered unbeatable.

But how we build these technologies and algorithms - particularly when it comes to the data we are using to create and train them - is of crucial importance.

It’s why we’re working not just on the technological side of things, but also engaging on the ethics and rules for practical implementation of these exciting developments, such as my co-founder being a leading contributor to the Whitepaper on AI in Clinical Practice.

Why we decided to participate in HackerNoon's Startup of the Year awards

To be honest, one of our community members must have signed us up because it was a surprise to us!

But a very pleasant one, because we believe that our technology and the idea of medical data donation have the power to save lives, and we want as many people out there to be aware of this growing movement.

Final Thoughts

We’re very thankful for the nomination and would like to thank everyone who has voted for us, and we hope that if you haven’t already you will consider doing so!

We would also love for you to check out https://donateyourdata.io as well and sign up for the waiting list to become a medical data donor! Best of luck to everyone!

Click here: Vote for us today!