The data problem nobody talks about

Your medical data is worth billions. You get nothing.

Every scan, every lab result, every wearable reading you generate helps train AI models and develop new treatments. The companies that profit from your data are worth billions. You—the person who created it—earn exactly zero.

$1.9B Roche paid for one oncology data platform1
$0 What the patients whose data powered it earned
3.6B Medical images produced globally each year6
The Swell vision

The people who create medical data should own it.

Swell is a protocol where patients, providers, and technicians earn automatic revenue every time their data is used for research or AI training. Transparent. Programmable. Fair.

Patients

Your data. Your earnings.

Your scans, wearable data, and health surveys are yours. When a researcher licenses your anonymized data to train a diagnostic AI, you earn automatically.

Comparable value per patient: up to $8,800 over 5 years3
Providers

Your expertise multiplies value.

Clinical annotations, diagnostic notes, and quality assessments make raw data 10x more valuable. Every enrichment you add increases the dataset's worth—and your share.

Annotation multiplier: 5–10x base value4
Researchers & Industry

Better data, better models.

Access governed, high-quality datasets with clear provenance and consent. Fair compensation means sustainable, reliable supply.

Health data market: $8.8B and growing5
Why now

Medical AI is starving for data the current system can't deliver.

AI companies need massive, consent-verified medical datasets. But today's data lives in silos, lacks provenance, and has no consent trail. The people who need the data can't get it. The people who have it don't benefit from sharing.

Swell fixes both sides. Transparent incentives unlock supply. Governed provenance builds buyer trust.

3.6B Medical images per year globally6
$17.9B Projected health data market by 20335
10x Value increase with clinical annotation4
~$10 Cost to mint 1,000 governed assets on Solana7
How it works

Three steps. No blockchain degree required.

Smart contracts handle the complexity. You contribute data and collect earnings.

1

Contribute

Medical images are uploaded through a connected system. Context—clinical notes, annotations, device data—gets attached automatically.

2

Tokenize

Each data asset becomes a governed digital token with built-in rights, provenance, and revenue-sharing rules.

3

Earn

When researchers license the data, smart contracts distribute earnings to every stakeholder. No middlemen.

The compounding effect

Droplets become swells.

Every tokenized piece of medical data is a droplet. As more people contribute, droplets pool into datasets. Datasets compound into insights. Insights become treatments. Treatments generate revenue that flows back to the people who made it possible.

DROPLET POOL DATASET INSIGHT SWELL
Growing the network

One source partner today. An open invitation to every system that puts people first.

Unified—a vendor-agnostic data management platform for eye care—is Swell's first source partner. Real providers, real patients, real imaging data already flowing through production systems. That's how you solve the cold-start problem.

But the protocol doesn't stop at eye care. Any health data system can become a source partner—EHRs, imaging platforms, wearable ecosystems, research networks. Every new source makes the whole network more valuable for everyone in it.

  • Source partners keep full control of their data infrastructure
  • Swell adds governance, rights, and value return on top
  • Patients and providers earn regardless of which system they use
  • More sources = richer datasets = better insights = more revenue for all
Swell Governance & value return
Unified Eye care
EHR systems
Imaging platforms
Wearables
Research networks
The north star

Make swell profitable enough that well becomes free.

If advanced treatments, personalized medicine, and performance health generate fair revenue through transparent data markets, then basic care, diagnostics, and prevention can eventually cost nothing. That's the long game.

Sources

  1. Roche acquired Flatiron Health for $1.9B (2018) — Reuters
  2. Healthcare data utilization and interoperability challenges — Healthcare IT News
  3. Tempus AI S-1 filing: ~$8,800 cumulative revenue per sequenced patient — SEC EDGAR
  4. Clinical annotation value multiplier (5–10x) based on dataset pricing differentials between raw and annotated medical imaging data — PubMed literature
  5. De-identified health data market: $8.8B (2025), projected $17.9B by 2033 — Grand View Research
  6. 3.6 billion medical images produced annually — World Health Organization
  7. Solana transaction costs ~$0.00025/tx — Solana Foundation