Jowan Österlund has worked with piercing through out his working career. But the electric integration in to the body, he kind of slipped into just three years ago.
He says he has always been super fascinated by these things ever since he watched the movie Johnny Mnemonic.
What do you have going on now?
There’s a lot of fuzz around the new chips and the circle implants. North light is the name of it. It is simply a magnet activated circle with five LED lights. Made to illuminate the skin and the tattoos. We’ve made it to be totally free standing shine on half of the arm. It’s pretty cool, so it is basically for the modification part, that sort of clients. But the circle it self is just a concept to show that we are able to build very good circles. This runs on just five micro amperes per light set for ten seconds. I just want to say that our engineers are so clever.
Photo: Biohax International
What’s the next gadget?
The next station will be able to read the blood pressure, temperature and hopefully the oxygen level of the blood. And the sugar reading is something they are working at but the blood sugar is probably further away.
Will you have that implant available during the third quarter of 2016?
Yes! It will be sending over biometric data via Bluetooth to software, which will save it with time. It should be a source cycle on it, that’s the thought. So one can check one’s sleep and stuff. Although the software is not quite designed, but the point is to be able to scan the bio data between certain times and send it off.
But these circles must be larger than the chip I had in my hand from you at the Developer Conference Øredev. That chip was the size of a rice corn.
Yes it will be a bit larger than that one. They will be around 8 to 10 millimetres wide, 3 millimetres high and 20, and 25 millimetres long. It as a low profile and isn’t very wide. Just to limit the size of the hole to put it in.
Naturally one doesn’t want lots of scars on your body.
No, exactly. It should be big or small enough to tape back together and be able to heal within a week.
You have a magnet in your arm, what does it do?
It doesn’t do very much more than giving me a magnetic “vision” really. I can sense strong electromagnetic fields, and when I do the magnet flips a little. It is a magnet in a silicon casing. It can switch pool, so it can spin. So if you have a magnetic field such as a MRI, the magnet will spin with the same speed as the MRI camera.
How does it feel in your arm?
It spins a little. It is the same with a strong electromagnetic force; I can feel it tickling a little. If it is just about to tip over, it tickles.
Is there a financial interest in these electronic implants?
Yes, they generate money. And I believe every penny will be put into development to make them smaller and more effective. We will supply the world with the best and most intelligent implant there is. We’ll be listed in Forbes in ten years, ha ha. If you aim for the stars you’ll end up on the moon.
You say they don’t use a lot of electricity, is there some kind of batteries in them?
Version 1 has a battery. The new versions will have induction charging. The battery lasts for five years and 35,000 uses counting low.
So would it be possible to have a smart chip instead of a smart watch?
Absolutely. There’s probably a certain advantage with the watches that you can turn your hand to check a text message and decide if you want to reply or not. Although they are not very friction free as one had wanted. We are after a smarter implant and operative system; it will be here in a few years. We have Kaspersky (company within data security) with us and they want to know every single small thing we develop.
That’s good since the security packages are always sensible…
And if one should start sending biometric data and being online, you would want that sort of stuff in private VPN: s. All type of log in must be unique so that each code is also unique. Each time you use a password, a new one is injected into the chip. But I am convinced that within five to ten years these circles will ask for a DNA frequency to check that you are you. The only thing preventing us to get there is money really.
Money and people’s fear perhaps…
Yes, but the thing is that there are several of us who are a little avant-garde that can show that this is how safe this is. If the use overcomes the risks, people will be interested. Just remember how sceptic people were regarding the computers to start with.
The firm Biohax International, how big is it?
We have representatives in Europe and the US. At the moment I don’t have any activity within Biohax but I use it within my core area. So Biohax is really only existing at the moment to protect the name and the logo. We do flag a lot for it, since Biohax will be the name for a lot of this. I have developed my own implant kit that I will sell on to some well picked studios, that I know has a very high standard and that are able to execute this in a good way.
Yours truly is waiting with excitement to see what will come and for an upgrade of my own chip implant. Svip.se would like to thank Jowan Österlund and will without a doubt contact him for more exciting news within this area.
