Genomic Data Hub Shivom Voted in as ICOS Project

Shivom has been overwhelmingly voted for as a new project to receive ICOBox tools through the company's ICOS platform. This platform allows the ICOS token holder community to vote for what it considers to be the most promising ideas, and Shivom has received the most votes since the platform launched earlier this year. ICOBox then provides its ready-made ICO solutions to the winners without an upfront payment, in exchange for their future tokens.

Shivom stands out as an innovative application of blockchain technology, applying it to work in conjunction with another promising technology, genomics. Genomic medicine shows promise to enhance the understanding and treatment of as many as 7,000 rare diseases. The ecosystem will have wide-ranging and potentially transformative uses with global application.

The core idea behind Shivom is that each individual's DNA is a valuable and proprietary piece of information and that individuals should own this data and be able to decide how it is used and who gets to use it, and furthermore, be paid for its use as well.

As Shivom's Gourish Singla, COO, describes, "When we submit our DNA for genetic analysis, our personal information is often sold by the laboratory to third-party companies, research institutions and nonprofits. Shivom upholds the right of every individual to their own data, and the right to sell it, but only if they wish to. Every user will have full, fine-grained control over who can see or access their genome data. In addition, to gain the volume of information necessary to study specific diseases, our company intends to recruit patients by giving the test away for free."

To this end, the company plans to use blockchain technology, the same technology underlying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, to create an ecosystem with the world's largest database of individual DNA sequences.

A non-profit Shivom Foundation will be established to provide governance to oversee the database and give technical advice, offer marketing services and educational outreach, create incentives for contributors to share their data, and establish policies on transparency and conduct.

Embedded in our genetic code are multiple types of sensitive data that could be compromising if held in the wrong hands.  As such, the Shivom database will use technologies such as state-of-the-art cryptography to ensure privacy, security and transparency, whilst blockchain will ensure the integrity of data and a decentralized approach to its storage. Using blockchain technology there is currently no viable way to hack it, or at the very least much less so when compared with traditional database systems.

The Shivom project is led by CEO Dr. Axel Schumacher, who combines 20 years of experience in the field of genetics alongside an authoritative position at the intersection of healthcare and blockchain. He is joined by an impressive cast of genomics and fintech luminaries including COO Gourish Singla, business leader and social entrepreneur; CMO Sally Eaves, Forbes Tech Council and Professor of FinTech, and CSO Per Lind, co-founder of the IOTA Foundation.

An important part of realizing this far-reaching vision will be the conduct of an ICO beginning January 10, 2018 and continuing until February 10, 2018. Shivom expects to collect a significant amount of funds in the ICO, which will help it to develop data-intensive techniques, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, to make optimal use and derive maximum benefits from the dataset.

To achieve this ambitious goal, Shivom will be using the technology and marketing tools developed by ICOBox to distribute its OmiX tokens, which will be created in the amount of 3 billion, equivalent to the number of base pairs in a haploid human genome. One third of these, approximately 990 million tokens, will be distributed in the ICO. These will be functional utility tokens that can be used in the Shivom ecosystem.