CoMEHeRe aims to transform personal healthcare for the benefit of individuals through the use and management of biometric information created by wearable devices. To do this it will combine data from an individual's wearables with DLT (blockchains) and machine learning to securely store and access data to enable the individual to share and benefit from their generated information. Sharing will be with state and private healthcare providers to enable more targeted, personalised patterns of treatment. Other benefits may arise from the individual participating materially in new markets created through the monetisation of this data. Recent interest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has ignited interest in DLTs and the role they play in how shared agreements are defined, managed, and evolved for a variety of ecosystems and information sources typical of today's digital economy. Indeed, the focus of attention has shifted from DLT as a technological phenomena supporting new types of currency e.g., bitcoin to their likely impact in changing business and society. DLTs have the potential for rewriting conventional notions of how business transactions relate with customers, enhance transparency and trust, and create fresh opportunities for value creation and capture. In domains such as healthcare, the potential of DLTs to disrupt the status quo is clear. However, a critical research need must be addressed: how to expose the opportunities and threats, such as privacy and security from emerging business models enabled by this technological revolution. CoMEHeRe aspires to build and assess the feasibility of the first publicly available software demonstrator to interface with insurers (AXA/PPP and its Seed Factory labs will be a partner) and the general public, using distributed ledger technologies to allow for data to be curated, hosted, and used as tradeable value by the individual's' choice. To achieve this CoMEHeRe will address a number of research challenges by utilising a novel combination of technologies, including the blockchain - a form of secure DLT - to store health evidence derived from multi-modal signals extracted from users' wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors they interact with in the environment. In addition, the project will examine the potential use of Smart Contracts (simple programs) in healthcare management at the research, public policy, and individual levels. Such a use will be challenged by many kinds of contractual, ethical and moral issues: for example if ownership is taken away from the individual, smart contracts could be made partially or fully self-executing, self-enforcing, or both, by authorities or businesses seeking to optimise for cost instead of health benefit to the individual. The CoMEHeRe project is an 18 month research project designed to create value in an innovative application domain for DLT in healthcare. To undertake this exciting, ambitious project we build on a strategic multi-disciplinary partnership at the University of Surrey that unites world-leading research groups focused on examining the business and societal impact of applications of digital technology (CoDE), multi-modal signal processing (CVSSP), and IoT and sensor-based communications infrastructures (ICS and 5GIC). This partnership is contained within a broader delivery consortium. This includes Axa/PPP offering the application context and a basis for assessing practical impact, Guardtime providing a DLT foundation for the research work, and BioBeats delivering machine learning platform expertise. To govern this work there will be an experienced Advisory Board bringing governance and guidance to ensure the project delivers meaningful results from which new research and practice can emerge. This experienced partnership has a practical record of previous work in these areas, and a broad network of relationships bringing deep support, and rapid promotion of research results.

CoMEHeRe aims to transform personal healthcare for the benefit of individuals through the use and management of biometric information created by wearable devices. To do this it will combine data from an individual's wearables with DLT (blockchains) and machine learning to securely store and access data to enable the individual to share and benefit from their generated information. Sharing will be with state and private healthcare providers to enable more targeted, personalised patterns of treatment. Other benefits may arise from the individual participating materially in new markets created through the monetisation of this data. Recent interest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin has ignited interest in DLTs and the role they play in how shared agreements are defined, managed, and evolved for a variety of ecosystems and information sources typical of today's digital economy. Indeed, the focus of attention has shifted from DLT as a technological phenomena supporting new types of currency e.g., bitcoin to their likely impact in changing business and society. DLTs have the potential for rewriting conventional notions of how business transactions relate with customers, enhance transparency and trust, and create fresh opportunities for value creation and capture. In domains such as healthcare, the potential of DLTs to disrupt the status quo is clear. However, a critical research need must be addressed: how to expose the opportunities and threats, such as privacy and security from emerging business models enabled by this technological revolution. CoMEHeRe aspires to build and assess the feasibility of the first publicly available software demonstrator to interface with insurers (AXA/PPP and its Seed Factory labs will be a partner) and the general public, using distributed ledger technologies to allow for data to be curated, hosted, and used as tradeable value by the individual's' choice. To achieve this CoMEHeRe will address a number of research challenges by utilising a novel combination of technologies, including the blockchain - a form of secure DLT - to store health evidence derived from multi-modal signals extracted from users' wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors they interact with in the environment. In addition, the project will examine the potential use of Smart Contracts (simple programs) in healthcare management at the research, public policy, and individual levels. Such a use will be challenged by many kinds of contractual, ethical and moral issues: for example if ownership is taken away from the individual, smart contracts could be made partially or fully self-executing, self-enforcing, or both, by authorities or businesses seeking to optimise for cost instead of health benefit to the individual. The CoMEHeRe project is an 18 month research project designed to create value in an innovative application domain for DLT in healthcare. To undertake this exciting, ambitious project we build on a strategic multi-disciplinary partnership at the University of Surrey that unites world-leading research groups focused on examining the business and societal impact of applications of digital technology (CoDE), multi-modal signal processing (CVSSP), and IoT and sensor-based communications infrastructures (ICS and 5GIC). This partnership is contained within a broader delivery consortium. This includes Axa/PPP offering the application context and a basis for assessing practical impact, Guardtime providing a DLT foundation for the research work, and BioBeats delivering machine learning platform expertise. To govern this work there will be an experienced Advisory Board bringing governance and guidance to ensure the project delivers meaningful results from which new research and practice can emerge. This experienced partnership has a practical record of previous work in these areas, and a broad network of relationships bringing deep support, and rapid promotion of research results.

The aim of ARCHANGEL is to ensure the long-term sustainability of digital archives though the design, development and trialling of transformational new distributed ledger technology (DLT) to promote accessibility and ensure integrity of content, whilst maximising its impact through novel business models for commodification and open access. Archives and Memory Institutions (AMIs) are the lens through which future generations will perceive today; they form the authoritative economic, social and cultural memory of a nation. For example, The National Archives (>15 petabytes) is one of the world's largest and oldest AMIs responsible for preserving the digital record of the UK Government e.g. key decisions made by Ministers and advice received. Some of this information is made open, some kept closed for decades. AMIs are founded upon the principle of public trust, of being neutral and completely trustworthy; the immutability and integrity of AMIs are essential to maintaining their objectivity. Yet world history is littered with examples where this objectivity has been compromised e.g. through expunging of physical records during times of political unrest. Today's digital age presents new socio-technical challenges to AMIs around safeguarding of data. Digital public records are intangible and so easy to remove or modify without that modification necessarily being detectable. Indeed in some cases records have to be modified to ensure their continued accessibility as formats change and the curation of data is also accompanied by the need to maintain associated code to render that data for presentation, often across decades. How should decisions over migration or prioritisation of maintenance be taken, or audited? What are the implications of migrations resulting in minor losses of fidelity one hundred years from now? How can the public be sure that digital content when released is fundamentally unaltered from the original? Existing archival practice is ill-equipped to respond to such issues, and is in urgent need of disruption to keep pace with our transformation into an increasingly digital society, so ensuring the integrity and impartiality of knowledge for future generations. ARCHANGEL is a 18 month socio-technical feasibility study co-creating and evaluating a novel prototype DLT service with end-users to determine how archival practices, sustainable models and public attitudes could evolve in the presence of a trusted decentralised technology to prove content integrity and ensure open access to digital public archives. From a technological standpoint, ARCHANGEL will leverage cutting-edge machine learning to collect robust digital signatures derived from digitised physical, and born-digital content, within a permissioned DLT. Both signatures and programmatic code to render content and verify its provenance and integrity will be encoded within the DLT. Novel business models for sustaining the DLT e.g. via contributed effort (proof of work) will be explored at the points of creation and consumption using a cross-AMI model in which a single DLT is contributed to by multiple AMIs, across disciplines and nations, mitigating risk of archive distortion by its operating AMI. Impact is not limited to traditional AMIs, but any digital public archive: University research data repositories (linked to DOI); better management of corporate memory in multi-nationals (e.g. financial/regulatory compliance, managing records of prior art in tech companies). To undertake this adventurous and ambitious project we have formed a strategic multi-disciplinary partnership uniting a world-leading group in multi-modal signal processing (CVSSP), the Centre for the Digital Economy (CODE) within Surrey Business School, and a consortium of AMI stakeholders including The National Archives and Tim Berners-Lee's Open Data Institute (ODI). The infrastructure will be developed with DLT platform provider Guardtime, and impact accelerated via Methods Digital.