In response to the increasing challenge facing the healthcare sector, a group of renowned scientists, medical doctors, entrepreneurs and academic figures is launching a unique endeavour: healthbank. At healthbank we are building the world’s first people-owned health data transaction platform. healthbank will connect data sources from all facets of the healthcare ecosystem and reward participants for sharing their data for research purposes. Based in Switzerland, healthbank will leverage the advantages of Swiss neutrality, trust, and data privacy to enable users, researchers, and organisations with large data sets, to unlock the value of health and medical data on our independent, global transaction platform. healthbank is organised as a Swiss Cooperative that is fully owned and governed by its members. Its purpose is to empower users to store, access, manage and share and gain returns from their personal health information according to their needs. Our vision is to play an active role in raising people’s awareness of health beyond illness, by providing self-governed, user-centric participative platforms and value-added services that enable health data accessibility, protection and rewards.