Blockchain has moved from being a purely a crypto-currency technology to having an important role in the field of healthcare, particularly related to the management of confidential patient information.
Insilico Medicine, a Baltimore-based next-generation artificial intelligence company specializing in the application of deep learning for drug discovery announced the publication of a new peer-reviewed research paper titled ”Converging blockchain and next-generation artificial intelligence technologies to decentralize and accelerate biomedical research and healthcare” in Oncotarget, Insilico Medicine scientists specializing in deep learning collaborated with the scientists and developers from the Bitfury Group, the world’s leading full-service Blockchain technology company, specializes in securing the Blockchain and deploying cutting-edge hardware and software solutions to governments, institutions, and corporations. In the paper, the groups presented the first attempt to assess the value of time and the combination value of personal data in the context of an AI-mediated health data exchange on blockchain.
“Most people do not understand what life data they have, how valuable and dangerous this data may be and do not have any control over how their life data is being used. The policy makers are trying to address this problem by introducing new regulations that make it expensive and difficult for the innovators to turn the human life data into life-saving products. In this paper we propose a blockchain-enabled solution to help people become aware of and take control over their data and profit from licensing the data to the innovators”, said Polina Mamoshina, Sr. research scientist at Insilico Medicine.
In this research paper scientists introduce new concepts to appraise and evaluate human life data, including the combination-, time- and relationship-value of the data and present a roadmap for a blockchain-enabled decentralized personal health data ecosystem to enable novel approaches for drug discovery, biomarker development, and preventative healthcare. A secure and transparent distributed personal data marketplace utilizing blockchain and deep learning technologies may be able to resolve the challenges faced by the regulators and return the control over personal data including medical records back to the individuals.
“We are enthusiastic that blockchain technology can help solve one of the major problems in modern healthcare – patient data management. We are even more excited that Insilico is building this solution on our open-source Blockchain framework, Exonum. An Exonum-based Blockchain provides security, transparency, and reliability, which will significantly improve overall efficiency and patient satisfaction as well as provide an avenue for easier auditing. We look forward to sharing our progress”, said George Givishvili, Chief Marketing Officer of Bitfury company.
Blockchain technology enables the creation of a distributed and secure ledger of personal data, where patients are in control, own their data, and monitoring of access privileges and understanding of who looked at the data. Most importantly, blockchain technology allows for the creation of a data-driven marketplace, where patients can earn tangible rewards for making their data available to the application development community, pharmaceutical and consumer companies, and research institutions and generating new data through regular and comprehensive tests and checkups. Presently, only a few patients worldwide have the comprehensive data sets containing their clinical history combined with the genetic, blood biochemistry and cell count profiles, lifestyle data, drug and supplement use and other data types, because they do not see the value in this data and do not get tested regularly. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical and consumer companies alike are willing to pay substantial amounts for the large numbers of personal data records required to train their AI. These funds can be used to subsidize the regular testing by the patients, uncover the new uses for the various data types and develop sophisticated diagnostic and treatment tools.
“In the post-neoclassical world, healthy productive longevity will be the new driver of economic growth. Creating an economy around human life data and returning the ownership and the control over life data back to the individual is one of the most important steps towards extending the healthy productive longevity of the global population. It is also a very altruistic cause, which may help reduce the gap between the rich and the poor and allow the people from all walks of life and geographies to equally profit from their own data”, said Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder of Insilico Medicine, Inc.
Summary:
Blockchain and Personal Health Data
Blockchain has moved from being a purely a crypto-currency technology to having an important role in the field of healthcare, particularly related to the management of confidential patient information. In this research paper scientists introduce new concepts to appraise and evaluate human life data, including the combination-, time- and relationship-value of the data and present a roadmap for a blockchain-enabled decentralized personal health data ecosystem to enable novel approaches for drug discovery, biomarker development, and preventative healthcare. A secure and transparent distributed personal data marketplace utilizing blockchain and deep learning technologies may be able to resolve the challenges faced by the regulators and return the control over personal data including medical records back to the individuals.
