Triall Roadmap Update: Introducing the Clinical Insights Exchange
Triall is a digital platform for clinical research that was established by a group of clinical trial experts and blockchain developers in 2018. Since our foundation, we’ve spearheaded the implementation of blockchain and related Web3 technologies in real-world clinical trials, collaborating with industry-leading organisations around the globe. Today, we’re excited to present an update of our roadmap, mapping our key objectives and direction for the coming period. Most notably, we introduce what we’ve dubbed the Clinical Insights Exchange, a federated data marketplace where biopharma companies can exchange clinical research data and insights without having to share or otherwise expose underlying data assets.
Introduction
Before we dive into our roadmap update, let’s start with a quick refresher on Triall.
What is Triall and why was Triall founded?
Triall (est. 2018) is a company that offers innovative software and supporting services to organisations involved in clinical trials: medical research studies that investigate the safety and efficacy of new treatments before these can enter the market. Modern clinical trials involve increasing amounts of electronic systems and data. As a result, researchers experience a lack of oversight, fragmentation, and uncertainty about the integrity and authenticity of collected research data. This reduces efficiency and reliability in the development of new medicines.
Moreover, clinical trials suffer from problems with patient recruitment and retention: 9 out of 10 trials experience delays because they cannot recruit enough patients in their target timeframe and the number of participants that drop out of the trial before it concludes has sharply increased over the years [1,2]. This presents a major cost driver in the development of new medicines. There’s a clear need for more patient-centric clinical trial processes that promote the patient experience and empower them in their participation, for instance by providing them with more insight and control over how their personal medical data is being used during and after participation.
How does Triall address these problems?
Triall applies decentralised and privacy-enhancing technologies to shape a digital ecosystem for clinical trials: a cross-system, multi-sided collaboration platform through which clinicians, patients, and other clinical trial stakeholders can collaborate and exchange research data and insights in a secure, verifiable, and self-sovereign way. This opens up ample opportunity for smarter, more-efficient, and truly patient-centric clinical research. In building out its digital ecosystem, Triall collaborates with industry-leading organisations in the domains of clinical research, blockchain, Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), and Web3 standards.
Our utility token TRL
Triall launched its utility token in September 2021, following a successful crowdfunding campaign that built a global multi-disciplinary community of nearly 1,500 investors from over 50 countries, among which many Life Science and medical research professionals. The TRL token offers a platform-native means of payment for software and services (more on our token economics) and represents a key building block for a self-sustaining digital ecosystem, where it can coordinate fair, equitable, and peer-to-peer exchange of data resources between data providers (e.g., patients), data consumers (e.g., Pharma, Biotech, CRO-companies) and service providers (e.g., AI companies, eClinical software providers).
Some of our past highlights:
- 2019 — World’s first clinical trial on blockchain: In 2019, Triall demonstrated its first solution (a blockchain-integrated document management application to verify essential study documents) in a real-world clinical trial. This marked the first time that blockchain was applied in a live and regulatory compliant clinical trial.
- 2021 — Launch of TRL: Triall launched its platform-native utility token TRL in 2021 (currently counting over 2,700 token holders).
- 2022 — Platform expansion with Crucial Data Solutions: In partnership with a leading eClinical software provider (8,000+ clinical trials track-record), Triall expanded its offering into a fully interoperable software platform to support clinical trials ‘end-to-end’: from study start-up through close-out and post-trial activities. It offers advanced web-based, mobile, and wearable integration capabilities to facilitate remote ways of working and promote patient-centricity.
- 2022 — Collaboration with Mayo Clinic: Triall started collaborating with world-renowned medical research center Mayo Clinic (#1 US hospital).
Introducing the Clinical Insights Exchange: the next step towards a digital ecosystem
Having implemented an end-to-end software platform that applies blockchain for verifiable data, Triall is now ready to take a next step towards materialising its vision for a digital ecosystem. In line with our long-term roadmap, we’re excited to announce the Clinical Insights Exchange (CIX): a federated data marketplace where biopharma companies, clinicians, and patients can exchange research data and insights without having to share or otherwise expose underlying data resources.
Triall CIX will interconnect different eClinical software, health information, and other data hosting systems. Applying advanced cryptographic techniques such as Compute-to-Data and secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC), Triall CIX enables authorised parties to perform privacy-friendly analyses over datasets connected to the platform. Thus, it enables data providers, such as pharmaceutical sponsors collecting clinical study data through eClinical software solutions, to create value from their sensitive research data without compromising data privacy or confidentiality.
Moreover, applying blockchain and self-sovereign identity (SSI), Triall CIX offers a Web3 toolkit to empower, compensate, and incentivise data providers and contributors in engaging with the platform — with TRL providing a primary means of access, benefit-sharing, and reimbursement.
How does the Clinical Insights Exchange fit with industry opportunities and trends?
Clinical trial data represents a vastly underutilised resource. More than 60,000 clinical trials are initiated each year [3], but collected data is often used only for the purpose of a single study and subsequently kept in silos due to a lack of sharing infrastructure, sharing incentives, and because of confidentiality and privacy concerns. Moreover, patients contributing data to a study lack insight and control over what happens with their data. Triall CIX will facilitate the exchange and reuse of data insights across currently siloed environments. Reusing clinical trial data opens a wealth of opportunities to advance the development of new medicines, ultimately benefiting global health and well-being. It will also open new avenues for improving patient empowerment by providing patients with additional reimbursement and incentives to participate in clinical research. The Clinical Insights Exchange is grounded in three major global trends, namely the transition to Web3, rise of the data economy, and growing health consumerism.
Roadmap update: Initiating Phase 3
The key milestones included in this roadmap update are the release of a public CIX prototype and subsequent development and release of the CIX v1.0. This roadmap update builds upon 5 years of research and design by our team and network of strategic partners, including the development of blockchain and SSI APIs, SDKs, infrastructure, and components. It marks the start of Phase 3 of our long-term roadmap and is divided in three different stages, namely the Alpha, Beta, and Release stage.
👉 For Phase 1–2 and our long-term roadmap, see this article.
PHASE 3A — Alpha
Triall is currently developing a working prototype of the CIX. The CIX prototype will include sample clinical research data and serves as a public demo, allowing us to spread our vision and engage with marquee customers and strategic partners, including biopharma companies and academic research institutes, in building towards the beta and release version of the CIX.
As part of the CIX prototype, we’ll also demonstrate a prototype of the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) wallet app, which we have been developing with our technology partner Sphereon since early 2022 (more info). The SSI wallet enables fine-grained, self-sovereign control over data assets and governing access permissions in the CIX. Uniquely, users will be able to access CIX resources in a decentralised, passwordless, and attribute-based fashion using the built-in privacy and security features of their smartphones.
To conclude Phase 3A, we will promote the CIX prototype at various high-profile events, including a world-renowned biopharma industry conference coming summer in the United States.
PHASE 3B — Beta
Following the CIX prototype release and promotion, Triall will engage with clinical data providers and computational partners to implement algorithms that can be applied for privacy-friendly analyses over datasets that are connected to the CIX. We will give particular attention to the development of AI models and the design of protocols for secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC), unlocking federated learning and analytics for CIX customers.
Phase 3B will also reinforce data integrity and authenticity throughout our federated data ecosystem by implementing certifications: verifiable proofs for CIX datasets, algorithms, and participants through blockchain anchoring and verifiable credentials.
Moreover, Triall will work on enabling token-based payment for access to CIX data and computational resources, applying our utility token TRL. This also includes the development of smart contracts for distributed benefit-sharing across different data providers, such as biopharma companies, clinicians, patients, and AI model providers.
Phase 3C — Release
Phase 3C centers around the release of the CIX v1.0, which will demonstrate the real-world application of the CIX for privacy-friendly exchange of data insights between clinical data providers and data consumers, facilitated by CIX-certified algorithms. As part of this, we will also demonstrate token-based reimbursement of data providers and data contributors using our utility token TRL.
🔍 Triall will dedicate a separate article to CIX data use cases.
Conclusion
This roadmap update marks Phase 3 in our long-term roadmap and centers around the buildout and market introduction of the CIX. Uniquely, we will enable data analytics over historical clinical trial data that is currently hosted in eClinical systems, all while preserving confidentiality and privacy. Rather than competing in the highly competitive eClinical space, we complement and consolidate existing eClinical offerings in a federated fashion. In line with our vision of building a digital ecosystem, Triall will not only offer a marketplace for clinical trial data and algorithms but will also serve as a broker for related services, such as data analytics, AI, and contract research (CRO) services.
