Julian Ranger - Solving the data dilemma

September’s Member in the spotlight

An interview with Julian Ranger, Chairman & Founder of Digi.me

Tell us about your company.

The most significant new technologies of our time (AI, Personalised Health, Fintech, IoT, Smart Cities, Blockchain, etc) often depend on one thing to achieve their goals: availability of rich consumer data with privacy, security and consent. It has been assumed that this dependency will be solved at some point – it has by digi.me.

Digi.me solves the personal data issue by enabling individuals to own and control their personal data themselves, and then share with consent to any business that asks using the digi.me Consent Access system. This is all done with 100% privacy and full security, with a decentralised architecture where digi.me does not see, touch or hold personal data ever.

Any business can access rich data for any individual, whether that business is a one person start-up or a multinational. That rich data is single source, wider across data categories and deeper in time, 100% accurate, fully normalised, consented, private and secure. This enables radical changes in health through patient centricity, enables new FinTech models, new models of consumer engagement and more.

In a GDPR world, isn’t it good to know that you can do more with personal data, with full privacy, security and consent – not less. Just use the digi.me platform!

What has been your biggest success?

With digi.me it has been getting the Icelandic government to create the world’s first patient-facing API, so we can give Icelandic citizens their health data, and on the same level getting a worldwide agreement with the large system integrator, ITC Infotech, to include us in their reference architecture for all their Tier 1 clients.

What project are you most excited about right now?

We have a global health exchange being created using our platform – this will allow health researchers from all sizes of companies to access consented, longitudinal rich, health data sets for research that will undoubtedly lead to many new cures and discoveries being made.

How has being a member of The Clubhouse contributed to the success of your business?

We are based outside London, yet so many of our deals must involve meetings in London. Having multiple options to host such meetings, either formally or informally, and then work between meetings is invaluable. Digi.me operates to very high-quality standards in what we do; we want the facilities we use to do so too and The Clubhouse definitely provides that for us.

Where can members find you?

My favourite Clubhouse location is St James’s. Or to get in touch, I’m @rangerj on Twitter, julian@digi.me on email.

Quick Fire Round

Favourite place to go in London?
Natural History Museum – a stunning building and the contents are fabulous too.

Who inspires you and why?
Fictional: Biggles – made me want to work in aviation, travel the world and go to space – the first two I’ve completed, and the third will be next year with Virgin Galactic.

Best bit of advice you’ve been given?
Loss of face never made anyone look stupid.

If you were on a desert island, what would you bring?
A telescope to watch the stars – and the lenses would help start fires too.

What is the worst business ‘faux-pas’ you’ve committed?
In my first business, agreeing an EU grant contract with multiple Italian partners outside my business’s direct expertise area, which directly led several years later to me having to sue Lockheed Martin in the High Court for my final sale payment (I did win though). Lesson learnt: know what you know; be careful with what you don’t know.

 

For more about Digi.me visit their website: Digi.me

This article was originally featured in The Informer – September 2018. To read the full magazine, please click here.