The POC does exactly what it was supposed to achieve: It proves concepts, identifies areas of challenges, and helps with developing priorities for the next steps. We will basically continue to follow more of an Agile than a Waterfall-style development approach, at least as long as we are still driving it internally. This means that we will outline a vision but enable gradual improvements instead of purely pushing for a “Big Bang.” 

This is how I see the Prototype work: For all key development areas we are defining three plans, A, B, and (you guessed it! C. Plan A is the ideal solution, fulfilling everything outlined in our White Paper. Plan B is a fallback option in case we realize that the ideal target cannot be reached at a certain point in time. 

Plan C is a minimum viable solution component, and may involve manual steps, simplifications, and shortcuts https://healid.io/wp-admin/post-new.php#of various kinds. We 

To exemplify how this would work, let’s have a look at these various areas that we need to work on:

• The Heal-ID.
  Plan A is to have four levels of identification, with an optional additional passcode, generating a biometric ID that results in a consistent hash, and all that without any centralized database. Plan B is to focus on one of the four areas, using a specifically constructed gene sequencing and Heal-ID device, with limited functionality. Then we expand from there. Plan C is the use of just one of the four (or five, if we include passcodes) ID elements, or even just some sort of zero-knowledge proof. 
• Interface of the Heal-ID to Gene Sequencers.
  Plan A is to directly pull the data into Healid data storage, potentially even instead of doing any sequencing on the device itself. Sequencing would then be pushed to the miners. Plan B is to pull a file directly from the sequencer, but through an interface step. Plan C is to use a file location that has been loaded to a staging environment from which miners can pull it. The latter would involve a multi-step process and may function not too dissimilar from how 23andMe do things today.   
• Scalability of the Blockchain (and alternate consensus and encryption mechanisms).
  Here we want to start conversations with Truebit possibly also Zerocash. In reality, though, we do not really need to be concerned with scalability quite yet – which is an obvious Plan C (“doing nothing” in this respect). 
• Definition of Mining Tasks.
  Plan A is the ability to leverage algorithms like Truebit’s to enable genuine distributed computing as a mining task, and therefore push the sequencing part to the miners. Plan C is to treat this purely as a storage processing and consensus issue, based on a generic comparison to the reference genome. Plan B is to do something in the middle, and also consider alternative platforms. 

With the White Paper and the Web Page “done,” the next couple of weeks will be busy with work on the Smart Contract/DAF, the Community Outreach, and continued work on various technical and development aspects.