David Koepsell

General Counsel, Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, Latin America Market Leader ConsenSys Health

David Richard Koepsell (born 1969) is an American author, philosopher, attorney, and educator whose recent research focuses on how ethics and public policy deal with emerging science and technology. He has been a practicing attorney, been employed as an ontologist, been a university professor, and has lectured worldwide. He is a visiting professor of research ethics at National Autonomous University of Mexico, director of research and strategic initiatives at Comisión Nacional de Bioética (CONBIOETICA) Mexico, an adjunct professor at University at Buffalo and a senior fellow and education director of the Center for Inquiry Transnational, based in Amherst, New York.

Koepsell earned his PhD in philosophy (1997) as well as his doctorate in law (1995) from the University at Buffalo, where he studied with Barry Smith. Koepsell currently serves as an adjunct professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction, the University at Buffalo. He has lectured worldwide on issues ranging from civil rights, philosophy, science, ontology, intellectual property theory, society, and religion. Koepsell was appointed assistant professor of philosophy at TU Delft in September 2008 and was promoted to associate professor in September 2013. He is an associate editor of Free Inquiry magazine. He is the co-founder, with Edward Summer, of Carefully Considered Productions, an educational media not-for-profit corporation. He is also the co-founder of Encrypgen. EncrypGen is a software company creating next generation blockchain solutions for genomic data, empowering patients and donors, facilitating health, business, and science. Our Gene-Chain software first was previewed May 23, 2017. http://encrypgen.com and has been for customers since November 2018. Koepsell also serves on the advisory board of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom. He is the author of more than 60 peer reviewed articles and 12 books. He joined ConsenSys Health in March 2020.

FIRESIDE CHAT with Heather Flannery "Your Digital Self and your Actual Health: Blockchain, DiD, and EHRs"

TIME: Thursday, September 3, 11:30 am (-3 GTM)

ABSTRACT:

Health and digital identity are intertwined. Several billion people worldwide lack adequate access to their identity, much less their health records. Without state-recognized legal identity, the poorest cannot take part in the economy in any meaningful way, and without access to their health records and data, they are similarly disenfranchised from their own well-being. Blockchains are providing new mechanisms to leap-frog state-disenfranchisement, and to bring to everyone equal and productive access to identity, unleashing their abilities to own property they only inhabited before, or to borrow and access capital to build upon their labor and ingenuity.

Blockchains can provide trusted proof of title, validating indicia of ownership, and making it more difficult for states to deny their poorest equal participation in its institutions. The same is true for health. By combining the twin problems of inadequate proof of identity and adequate access to and control of health records and biomedical data, a whole new avenue for participation in one’s own individual health, and the world’s rapidly growing biomedical data economy, blockchain and AI-based technologies offer us a liberating and enriching force for rapid change.

This is especially exciting and promising where legacy systems are still largely paper-based or even non-existent and where sovereigns embrace the potential of these technologies to transform their economies and recognize our instinctive rights of self-direction and control of our data and health.