Why ICO for BurstIQ? is there a particularly unique use case for the token?
Don't mean to be respectful, there are a lot of these lately and most are thinking to raise money first and leverage blockchain later. Otherwise there are many other companies who are also reclaiming patient health data back to the patients. What makes you guys different?
Totally understand the questions. I just posted a response to a similar question about why we're using blockchain, but the nutshell is that blockchain wasn't an afterthought for us. From Day 1 we knew we'd use blockchain because it provides an immutable and audible chain of custody for the data - so the platform knows who has seen a given piece of data, how it was used, and how that data element has been modified over time. This is essential for managing sensitive health data.
What makes us different from personal health records (PHRs, which is essentially what you're describing) is that PHRs don't really allow you to do anything with your data - you can see it and send it to your doc, but not much else. Our belief is that people should be able to not just access their own data, not just understand it, but gain value from it. Right now, health systems and insurers and pharma companies can access and extract value from your health data, but for the most part, you can't. So the BurstIQ platform creates a global marketplace where you can put your data to work for you - you can share it with digital health companies in exchange for personalized smart solutions, you can share it in exchange for discounted insurance rates or free wellness benefits from your employer. You can donate it to research causes you care about, you can participate in clinical trials, you can buy health-related products and services. In each case, you are choosing to share (or not share) your data, and each data transaction is accompanied by a financial transaction of BiQ tokens. Individuals may not be aware of the financial transaction because much of the activity on the platform may be free to them, and because the platform will be able to seamlessly exchange local currencies into BiQs.
So that's where the token sale comes in. We have a number of institutional customers already on the platform, but as we gear up for the consumer launch, we needed to do two things simultaneously: 1) ramp up our development team to build the consumer interface, and 2) build a community of early adopters so that we have consumers using the platform when the consumer product launches in 2018. Hosting a token sale allows us to do both: we can offer early adopters with discounted BiQs now so that when the consumer interface launches, these early adopters will have the currency (both literally and figuratively) to begin using the marketplace immediately.