Clinical Trail Ethereum Blockchain demo
This project is to demonstrate on how blockchain can be used in improving data transparency in clinical trials using Ethereum smart contracts for Ethereum smart contracts. This project was built using the Ethereum development and test framework Truffle.
This software requires access to an Ethereum blockchain network. For simple testing purposes the simplest setup is to use testrpc which creates an in memory blockchain. This software would also require IPFS which is distributed file system which will be used for storing the trial protocols in a distributed manner.
Blockchain and clinical trials
Recently, a study was conducted to better understand and heighten awareness of the difficulty of enrolling patients for clinical trials, and the results were dire. Researchers examined how many patients were aware of ongoing and available clinical trials and found that a mere 16% (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2878987/) of patients were actually aware of relevant clinical trial options during the time they were considering treatment options.
That means that approximately 85% of patients had no idea that valuable clinical trials were in operation or that they would have benefited from treatment that the trials offered. To think that so much money and time is spent on developing drugs and almost none is spent on finding patients for clinical trials is astounding, and the public should be made aware of it.
Blockchain technology will be able to directly increase the quantity and quality of patients recruited for clinical trials in a number of ways. This type of distributed ledger could allow individual patients to store their medical data by anonymous methods, thereby making it visible to trial recruiters, who could then reach out to the patients if their data qualifies for the clinical trial.
It could also streamline the communication between doctors and patients during the trial. Blockchain has the tools to provide smart contracts that endorse transparency and traceability over clinical trial sequences, and can provide financial incentives for a patient’s participation and sharing of their data.
The future of blockchain
There are so many rewarding benefits for integrating blockchain technology into clinical research, from tracking and sharing data to the needed transparency and privacy concerns for patients. The global impact of implementing this technology will be both momentous and timely. The coevolution of blockchain and clinical research studies is still in its infancy, but researchers are continually collaborating to find new ways of cutting costs and saving time for a wide range of applications in the clinical trial setting. Ultimately, their efforts will result in cheaper drugs for everyone.