At the 2025 DeSci Summit in Dubai, my presentation centred around one idea.

Blockchain is the guardian of AI.

I do not state this as a metaphor but rather as a roadmap for building a future we can trust, especially in healthcare.

At SpineDAO, we’re building more than just a clinical technology stack. We’re creating a decentralized trust layer where expert-labeled clinical data can power predictive AI tools—useful for several surgical and operative purposes—from triage to surgical decision-making, transparently, securely, and on-chain. 

We believe that what we are building is not only necessary but also inevitable. Here’s why.

Why Healthcare AI Needs Secure, Transparent Data

AI models in medicine are only as good as the data they're trained on. Whether it's predicting surgical outcomes or triaging patients, large language models (LLMs) need access to vast, high-quality, expert-labeled data.

However, today’s healthcare data landscape is plagued by problems hindering access to useful healthcare data:

• Patient records are fragmented, siloed, and inaccessible
• Consent is opaque, hard to verify, and easily violated
• Experts have no standardized incentive to contribute or validate data

Without transparent, verifiable access to this data to train AI models on, healthcare AI risks becoming a black box, prone to bias, error, and risk.

Blockchain: The Missing Layer of Integrity

Blockchain technology opens up the black box, addressing the issues with accessing transparent, verifiable data at the root. It does this by enabling:

• Immutable logs for every data point and label
• Personalized, revocable, GDPR- and HIPAA-compliant consent
• Tokenized incentives for patients and experts via the $SPINE token

Building on this technology and our partnership with Data Lake, we’re building a blockchain-based consent system that:

• Offers granular, multilingual consent options
• Tracks every action taken on-chain
• Rewards data contributors and validators with tokens

Powered by blockchain technology, SpineDAO becomes a truth machine; not just for data storage, but for healthcare decision-making itself.

When AI Meets Blockchain: Clinical Triage in Action

Recent research from the University of Pennsylvania shows that LLMs significantly outperform traditional models in emergency triage, especially when trained on high-quality, expert-labeled data. [1]

Other key findings include that:

• GPT-4o and Claude-3 showed higher accuracy and robustness
• Retrieval-based prompting (e.g., KATE) outperformed few-shot learning
• Intersectional biases remain, especially across sex and race, demanding better auditability

This highlights why the blockchain is an important layer in our stack. Every AI prediction made is logged, traceable, and backed by expert input, ensuring not just accuracy but accountability.

FILTER and DeScide: Real Tools, Not Just Theory

Currently, we are developing and will soon launch two on-chain AI-powered Software as Medical Devices (SaMD):

1. FILTER: An AI triage system that analyzes patient-reported symptoms, pain scores, and imaging, all with a clinician-in-the-loop and transparency at the core of its design.

2. DeScide: An AI-assisted surgical planning tool offering data-driven surgical strategy recommendations and post-operative outcome simulations for spine surgeries.

Both are designed to comply with regulatory frameworks such as:

• FDA 510(k) (21 CFR 892.2050 & 892.2080)
• EU MDR 2017/745 (Rule 11)
• EU AI Act 2024/1689 (Article 6 on high-risk AI systems)

Blockchain = Scalable Compliance

Our infrastructure powers:

• On-chain consent revocation (GDPR/HIPAA-compliant)
• Auditable logs for regulators and researchers
• Continuous performance monitoring
• Version tracking for AI models

This supports post-market surveillance, bias audits, and real-time clinical validation, not as an afterthought, but by default.

We are committed to global standards like the FDA’s Good Machine Learning Practices and the EU’s Annex XIV Clinical Evaluation, ensuring fairness, safety, and explainability.

Closing the Loop: Patient ↔ Expert ↔ Protocol

At the center of this system is Lamina, our AI-powered triage chatbot. But Lamina is more than a bot, it is a decentralized coordination layer. It serves a three-fold purpose:

1. Patients share data (MRI, symptoms) and are rewarded in $SPINE
   
   
2. Experts label and verify this data, and are also rewarded
   
   
3. Smart contracts enforce logic, fairness, and auditability without human bias
   
   

This creates not just a feedback loop, but an ethical operating system for spine care.

In Conclusion, Blockchain Technology is the Backbone of Trust

We are well in the age of AI, and with AI being used in surgery, data is the scalpel while blockchain technology is the sterilization protocol.

By combining expert curation, explainable AI, and decentralized infrastructure, we are building a healthcare ecosystem grounded in trust, not assumptions.

If you believe the future of medicine should be transparent, ethical, and decentralized, we invite you to join our community and participate in our value capture economy for spine healthcare data by getting yourself some SPINE tokens.

Let’s change back stories, one spine at a time.