Open source

The concept of a 'Tech Tree' is well known from games such as Civilization, and we borrow it to guide our engineering initiatives around crucial bottlenecks. In these games, aplayer is presented with various technologies (such as the alphabet, metallurgy, irrigation, mathematics, and navigation) arranged in a directed graph on a timeline. The player chooses which technology to research according to their goals and logical critical path. One might choose to learn Mathematics and Carpentry to unlock catapults, advance astronomy and religion to unlock cathedral construction or learn trigonometry and shipbuilding to unlock advanced navigation.

For Elata, we have constructed our own Tech Tree, designed to accelerate the unlocking of emerging mental health treatments through open-source projects. A good DAO, and a good tech tree, should aim for a new capability that borders on science fiction, yet remains clearly feasible given current technology. We believe in a future where a patient can receive detailed biomarkers of their mental health, share that data safely, receive a diagnosis or treatment recommendation from a machine learning model, and take an advanced treatment such as a targeted small-molecule drug. Looking back throughout history, terms like “Melancholia,” “Nervous exhaustion,” “Monomania,” or “Shell Shock” strike modern readers with a sense of outdated ignorance and comparative barbarity. With Precision Psychiatry and its prerequisite advancements in biomarker collection tools, data collection, clustering algorithms, and computer vision, we believe conditions will be renamed and better understood and treated.