SEED Protocol delivers unparalleled data integrity, privacy and security for your valuable information
Gain access to and control of your confidential information.
Our Leadership Team
© 2016 SEED Protocol, LLC. All rights reserved.
U.S. Patent Nos. 9,378,380 and 9,390,228
Contact Us: +1-740-592-2950
info@seed-protocol.com
Origins
The SEED Protocol came to life when the CEO of a mid-size health system, a client of Reid’s consulting practice, challenged Tom to design a better solution for health information exchange. At the same time, the CIO of the same healthcare provider wanted to safely leverage commodity cloud storage to reduce the costs for storing medical records.
Starting with a blank piece of paper, Reid designed the Secure Exchange of Encrypted Data Protocol. Once Reid and his original co-inventor realized that no company was offering the solution, they began the process of securing rights to the invention.
The SEED Protocol’s expansive intellectual property includes 80+ claims across three issued U.S. patents providing robust protection. Our fourth U.S. patent application filed in April 2018 broadens the claims. SEED Protocol has also filed for patent protection in the European Union.
SEED Protocol LLC is a transatlantic startup developing the USA and Europe in parallel. We share common goals while embracing geopolitical differences in the evolution of data security policies and laws.
SEED Protocol is cybersecurity solution.
Please help us inform and empower.
Tom Reid
CEO & Founder
Tom is a technology visionary and hands-on leader with three decades of experience in network protocols, cybersecurity and IT management.
The SEED Protocol is the culmination of that experience, invented to meet client demand for secure portability and affordable storage of proprietary data.
Ian Smith
President E.U. and Co-Founder
Ian applies Design Thinking to digital disruption. He has over 35 years of experience building innovative tech firms of all sizes.
In creating digital solutions for healthcare and government, Ian delivers game changing solutions with security built-in from the ground up.
Our Locations
United States
340 W. State Street
Athens, Ohio 45701
+1 740 592 2950
United Kingdom
9-11 Vittoria Street
Birmingham, West Midlands, B1 3ND
+44 7785 264 957
Reid's Rants
Unraveling the Mysteries of Healthcare Data
Most of us have heard of a loved one’s struggles to bring together records from multiple healthcare providers. With aggregation of personal data commonplace in other industries, why can’t we easily consolidate healthcare records?
Patients’ rights in the U.S. include sweeping language, stating that healthcare systems "must provide the individual with access to the protected health information in the form and format requested by the individual….”* Yet in attempting to exercise this right, patients all too often face a playbook of obstructive bureaucratic hurdles.
Once the hurdles have been cleared, which may require months of concerted effort, patients frequently receive poorly organized, often incomplete and difficult to interpret information. These copies of records reflect a point of time in the past, the data already “aged.” Unfortunately, patient portals achieve little in bridging the gap.
A common industry refrain asserts that incompatible formats among the competing electronic health record software companies prevent sharing. While significant and unnecessary complexity does exist, behind-the-scene flows of patient data occurs every second. From seeking decision support to electronic prescriptions, from processing claims to reporting to health departments, patient data routinely flows to established business partners via dozens of interfaces.
So why doesn’t the data also flow freely to patients? Simple. Healthcare providers have become increasingly competitive, using vertical integration to capture more and more of any given patient’s revenue. The patient data thus represents a crucial and valuable corporate asset. Stonewalling data sharing increases consumer “switching costs” – a laudable strategy from a purely business perspective.
Squared off in opposition, healthcare systems assert their ownership of patient data, while consumer advocates seek patient control. The SEED Protocol offers a powerful middle ground that recognizes the unique nature of healthcare information.
Leveraging the SEED Protocol, each care provider retains authority over the records it creates, protected with individualized encryption. Patients gain read-only access to the live data, always having the latest information. Our Ledger feature verifies data flows within a care ecosystem, insuring data integrity.
We need to cooperate in resolving this impasse because – unlike in other industries – timely sharing of healthcare data is literally a matter of life and death. Unifying the records will free healthcare providers to compete on innovation and quality rather than banking on the value of their data silos.
-- Tom Reid, CEO, SEED Protocol, 2 Dec 2018
* Code of Federal Regulations Title 45, Section 164.524, a portion of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Quantum Promiscuity
Albert Einstein described it as “spooky action at a distance.” The phenomenon to which he refers, known as entanglement, lies at the heart of efforts to develop quantum computers.
Hyped forecasts predict quantum supremacy that will, among other impacts, render all current forms of encryption useless. Particle promiscuity, though, will continue to confound engineering, delaying or even defeating efforts to create reliable quantum computers.
In today’s conventional computer chips, electricity moves through microscopic pathways just a few atoms wide, a reality which already seems quasi-magical. Yet as we go even smaller, like Alice through the looking glass, we enter the realm of quantum physics. In this world of the nearly incomprehensibly tiny, bizarre experimental observations kicked-off a reformulation of a large portion of the field of physics. The theoretical revisions remain far from complete despite a century of concerted effort by great minds.
One of the quantum mysteries appears when two particles become “entangled.” Once entangled, regardless of the distance separating them, each particle reacts simultaneously to a change in its twin.
Einstein found this impossible because the communications between the entangled particles appears to exceed the speed of light, thus his “spooky” observation. 80+ years later we still cannot explain how it happens.
Returning to the familiar, imagine trying to wire a home or build a computer without a strong scientific understanding of how to harness electricity. With the underlying physics of entanglement yet to be discovered, attempts to create quantum computers will remain bedeviled by the unexplained.
For instance, so called “noise” degrades quantum computer performance, often derailing operations after just hundredths of seconds when the entangled particles “lose coherence.” In other words, for unknown reasons these exotic computers only work very short periods of time before needing to be reinitialized.
Perhaps the loss of coherence arises from promiscuity of the particles. While entanglement arises naturally, in quantum computers we force particles to entangle. Perhaps the particles elect to entangle instead with particles in the computer’s housing or resume entanglement with previous partners now light years away. Perhaps particles engage in simultaneous entanglement with multiple other particles.
To deter such unwanted “noise” most quantum chips are cooled to near absolute zero to slow down the particles’ wandering entanglement interests, trying to force them to remain with the dance partner we assign.
Sound like a flight of fancy from an unhinged arm-chair physicist? So little do we actually know about the quantum phenomena that one cannot even disprove my only somewhat tongue-in-cheek suppositions.
While deep pocket tech behemoths inadvertently engage in fundamental scientific research, understand that their efforts, while fascinating, will not soon yield encryption-threatening quantum computers.
Do not let the hyperbole deter you from much needed information assurance and cyber security efforts such as encryption.
-- Tom Reid, CEO, SEED Protocol, 8 July 2018
Tom's Recent Articles
Unraveling the Mysteries of Healthcare Data
Conversion of a Blockchain Skeptic
Searching for the right scapegoat....
Stop Blaming the Users for Phishing Impact
Blowouts and Patches: The Equifax Lessons
The Titanic and the Equifax Breach