I debated on sending this as a private message, but wanted to be transparent and have replies visible to all. I went trough the whitepaper and have a number of questions/concerns. Overall, I am excited for this project as I see a great need for it. Please take my comments in stride. They are only meant to aid in furthering the understanding of everybody involved in the project.
The ATLAS token represents the permanent destruction of the world’s most unethical
paywall...
This is pretty intense for an opening line. The content costs money because they have to monetize its upkeep or it will remain stagnant. I like this project's idea, but 'permanent' is never the case with anything.
Because of its highly independent design, the PeerAtlas foundation can direct its community to reward qualified individuals that help its mission in a transparent and ethical manner.
Who gets to decide who is 'qualified' enough to participate. I'm worried that this could turn into another Wikipedia where anybody can change anything. You wouldn't want somebody going around and saying the medical treatment for every sort of pain is jelly beans would you?
ATLAS will transact in two major pathways that directly benefit the project. Firstly, direct donations of ATLAS will be enabled for verified creators of medical articles and
algorithms that the community finds useful.
Using UpToDate as an example, they look over multiple peer-reviewed articles, studies, and guidelines before writing their recommendations. How to you plan on separating the qualified community from the unqualified community? Just because somebody went to a professonal school doesn't mean that they are an expert in everything. I don't pretend to know everything and I practice within my scope.
This allows contributing professionals to receive compensation for their time and effort.
Will this be based on a 'community' vote or will each article be a true peer review from qualified individuals? I see that you have civilian accounts. Are they able to take part in such votes? I see this as a possible source of collusion.
Secondly, medical professionals using
the site will accumulate continuing medical education (CME) credits that will be redeemable through the site in exchange for ATLAS tokens.
How does this work for claiming CME? Typically, these are tied to specific activities that have to be vetted. Even sites like UpToDate tie each individual amount of CME to each article that you search for on their site. Are you implying that one could simply buy enough CME for the year and not have to read articles, takes quizzes, etc?
These direct transfers of ATLAS from the community are
the best long-term strategy for PeerAtlas to offer paid content for free.
Now, I see this as a good idea in the long run if you answer that the general civilian population is unable to vote for quality of posts as I stated above. This makes collusion pointless and the donations would be anonymous.
This is to avoid indirect donations to PeerAtlas from drug companies and
other special interests that would benefit from influencing the library.
PeerAtlas Co-Founder Ling Wu is currently employed by a pharmaceutical company as
a chemist, and will submit her resignation at the completion of crowdfunding.
BRAVO! This was a welcome part of the paper!
PeerAtlas anticipates a shifting focus towards the use of
AI (Artificial Intelligence) to create individualized treatment recommendations and
algorithms for specific patients through the use of the patient’s existing EMR data. AI
could work with anonymized EMR data to offer a worldwide live rolling clinical trial for
evidence-based recommendations.
Now this is definitely interesting. The HIPPA regs would likely need to be circumvented, but who knows what sort of regs will exist in 20-40 years from now. I could see anonymized EMR data being used in the near future for such a project. There are number of current projects that are attempting this such as Medibloc and Medicalchain.
