Get to know Guy Newing, the founder of Immunify.Life
Here are some questions to get to know the person behind Immunify.Life:
- About Guy Newing’s background.
I have spent over 25 years in healthcare-related enterprises, both working with large multinational pharmaceutical companies and in my own healthcare businesses. I have lived in, worked in or visited over 50 countries, including a good number in Africa. During one visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I was struck by the huge gap in health outcomes compared to where I was living in Australia. That led me to think about what it could do to help address this inequity. And so, Immunify.life was born.
2. Why blockchain? Aren’t there any other ways to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS in African countries?
On one level, blockchain promises to deliver a completely secure, time-stamped, immutable record of healthcare data. It also has the potential to provide a delivery vehicle to quickly and cost-effectively transfer value from organizations that fund healthcare to those who will benefit from it. The big picture is about the empowerment of marginalized people through decentralization. The combination of empowerment and decentralization is a relatively new concept, but blockchain and cryptocurrency have the potential to give individuals ownership and control over their valuable healthcare data, allowing them to benefit from its value in the long run.
3. Why did you choose Cardano?
Cardano is a layered system. It allows peer-to-peer transactions on its blockchain layer and smart contracts. This multilayer network makes Cardano more flexible, scalable, and secure. When building a health management ecosystem, we need a blockchain that will be fast, cost-effective, and have a low carbon footprint. We are closely aligned with the Cardano African focus and their “scientific philosophy and research-driven approach”.
4. What are Immunify.life and MMUST short and long term goals? Have you achieved any results so far?
We are very proud of the strong tangible progress we have made in delivering real world traction. We are using blockchain technology to address some of the world’s biggest health issues: HIV, COVID, opiate addiction, and more.
We have started a world-first study in Kenya using crypto rewards to improve treatment rates for HIV. Our COVID vaccination data collection and certification project is about to start in ZAMBIA. The next goals are to commence projects in the US with OPIOID addiction and in Indonesia with tuberculosis.
With MMUST (a leading research university in Kenya), we have commenced the HIV study to look at the impact of providing crypto rewards to improve treatment rates for HIV (still one of the world’s biggest killers). This study should be completed in 6 months. We will then work with them and the Kenyan government to broaden the use of the technology across Kenya and Africa, and conduct further research in other disease states.
We have just started a strategic round offer that can be accessed through our website, and we are monitoring market conditions to help inform the timing of our public sale.
In the longer term,we will begin to generate revenue by commercializing the data we are collecting and continue to build out our tech as per our roadmap.
5. What can you say to those who are skeptical about your goals?
It’s natural to have some skepticism about innovative projects in the blockchain space. I would point people to the substantial rapid delivery of our in-field projects to date, and our real world partnerships with organizations working in a range of countries and disease areas who are already delivering in healthcare.
6. Could you tell me about your team?
Our team has over 60 years of healthcare experience and over 10 years of blockchain experience. We have good depth in experts in Africa and the complexities of doing business there, and our Geneva-based member has a great understanding of the network of contacts in NGOs and foundations that fund healthcare.
7. What is the most challenging problem you’ve encountered so far?
The biggest issue so far has been managing the multiple complex projects that are spread across the world with a team that is also geographically dispersed.
8. What are your project’s strongest and weakest points?
Strengths:
There is a huge business opportunity as 30% of all the data in the world is healthcare data but in emerging economies, little of it is being captured and used effectively. The paper-based systems that are currently used to track and manage healthcare create many issues .
We are offering a simple-to-use solution at no cost to end users, so there will be very little barrier to entry for us.
We have a very strong token utility model. The demand for the token is linked to the size of the data pool. The more data we collect, the stronger the demand.
Weaknesses:
We have multiple projects underway and managing them all effectively is a challenge.
We are currently using an ERC 20 test net to support our token rewards and project data collection and we want to migrate to the Cardano chain as soon as it is viable.
9. How can regular blockchain users help you in improving healthcare in African countries?
The easiest way is to support us by registering your interest in investing through our website, www.immunify.life.
10. Some people don’t believe in projects with “too noble goals”. What would you say to them and could you classify yourself as a “project with noble goals”?
The great thing about the planet we live on is that everyone is entitled to their own view. We believe in “doing well by doing good” :)
11. What are your plans for the next year? What do you expect from both the healthcare and blockchain sides?
On the token side, we want to complete a successful strategic round of public sale and listing, and as our “ in field” operations grow, the organic demand for Immunify tokens should kick in. We plan to launch some innovative charitable DeFi pools where investors can stake tokens and donate a proportion of the APR to a good cause. We also want to transition from our testnet to the Cardano chain.
The healthcare side will see us leveraging the results of the HIV and COVID work to expand the use of our ecosystem with NGOS and governments across Africa and expand into other disease states such as tuberculosis, OPIOID addiction and other continents (Asia and the Americas).
About Immunify.Life
Immunify.Life is a transformative and self-sustaining healthcare ecosystem secured by blockchain with the mission to transform the landscape of health management and data utilization. The project leverages the power of Big Health Data and Artificial Intelligence to ensure seamless movement of de-identified patient healthcare data.
Immunify.Life has established a strong presence in Africa with a team that has over 60 years of combined experience in the relevant industries. It is a world-first holistic and self-sustaining ecosystem to solve global health management crises and data collection challenges.
