Blockchain for Clinical Trials IEEE Event

Great event yesterday advancing Blockchain for Clinical Trials at the Orlando Science Center https://blockchain.ieee.org/clinicaltrialsforum-2018/. Thank you Maria Palombini for gathering a group of passionate group who believes that blockchain will improve patient lives! Most impressive work from Dr Vahan Simonyan from the FDA, Vahan shared with us the progress of his Healthcare Data Exchange Framework, powered by blockchain to provide the right incentives for participants to share the healthcare data. If you are looking into applying blockchain to improve clinical trial veracity, talk to Pr Mehdi Benchoufi- Mehdi’s team has done extensive research and proof-of-concepts on this topic. Great initiatives too from the pharma industry with examples from Munther Baara from Pfizer and Adama Ibrahim, MBA from Biogen. The workgroup I had the chance to facilitate discussed whether we should incent patients included in clinical trials with crypto-tokens. Our group saw opportunities in improving patient identification, inclusion and protocol compliance, while also identified challenges as regards to generating biais in the inclusion, complementing monetary incentives with other kinds of incentive and potential unhealthy competition in recruiting patients.