Blockchain for scientific research
The case for decentralized, trusted platforms for the dissemination of scientific information and attribution. Today a system that sets wrong incentives for the scientific community is prevailing that is relying on an outdated system for the communication of science through centralized publisher cartels. As a result, science in some fields is suffering from increasingly poor reproducibility. This bears the risk of loss of credibility among the public and increased scarcity of public funding Ioannidis, ; Siebert, ; Reardon, ; Nature, n.
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Blockchain for scientific research
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Content:
- Blockchain for Science: Revolutionary Opportunities and Potential Problems
- How Can Blockchain Be Implemented in the Life Sciences Ecosystem?
- Research Papers
- Blockchain-enabled open science framework
- Quantrade Journal of Complex Systems in Social Sciences
- US20180323980A1 - Blockchain for open scientific research - Google Patents
- Blockchain for science and knowledge creation: An intro and overview
- Proceedings of the 2017 International Seminar on Social Science and Humanities Research (SSHR 2017)
- Researcher (m/f/d) Computer Science with experience in Blockchain
- Blockchain and Earth Observation: a white paper
Blockchain for Science: Revolutionary Opportunities and Potential Problems
As these products must undergo extensive testing before being approved for the public, gathering high-quality, reliable and statistically sound data is an important goal for all clinical research. There are, however, converging trends challenging the ability of legacy data management systems to establish and sustain data integrity throughout all phases of clinical studies:.
Every once in a while, a technology comes along that has the potential to act as a significant disruptive force.
Blockchain technology may very well be the next big disruptive technology and is likely to find applications in nearly every major industry to reduce cost, increase efficiency and more significantly, improve trust.
Trust is foundational all businesses, and blockchain enables companies to seamlessly establish both trust and transparency in data-related business processes in a non-centralized and therefore scalable and cost-effective way.
Blockchain technology was invented in with the creation of bitcoin by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Given the necessity of trust and transparency in financial transactions, finance transactions were a natural first use case for blockchain technologies.
The ability of blockchain to facilitate trust in a decentralized with relatively low cost has drawn the attention of researchers in the pharmaceutical industry, and efforts to apply the technology to data integrity problems within clinical trials are increasing. According to Statista , global blockchain technology revenues will experience massive growth in the coming years, with the market expected to climb to over In this blog, we will discuss ways in which blockchain technology is being applied to enhance data integrity in clinical research.
Ledgers are the foundation of accounting: a secure record of transactions is essential to the role of money in our society. Blockchain technology utilizes a distributed peer to peer computer network to create a digital ledger a form of a database using cryptographic techniques to store transaction records in a verifiable and unalterable way. Each server or node in the network can independently verify each data entry and modification of any data in the chain requires alteration of all following entries in the chain and consensus of the network.
In this manner, with a reasonable time and network distribution of transactions, the entire chain of entries is considered secure by design and fault tolerant due to the distribution of the data. When applied effectively, blockchain networks inherently resist modification of the data stored in the transaction record. The distributed nature of the network, the use of timestamped records, and cumulative cryptographic verification all assure that the stored data remains intact and immutable.
Additionally, the application of public key cryptography to the transactional data, makes the entries attributable and non-repudiable. Interestingly, these are key characteristics of asserting data integrity as defined by the FDA: attributable, legible, contemporaneous, original, and accurate ALCOA.
Furthermore, the ability of a blockchain to be an immutable audit trail makes blockchain technology perfectly suited for any company focused on data integrity and regulated or audited by 3 rd parties like the FDA. In addition, blockchain network participants can store, exchange and view information in the database without the need for establishing preexisting trust between the parties for example, by a negotiated legal contract — trust is in fact hardcoded into the blockchain protocol.
It is important to note that not all problems require or would be most effectively met with a blockchain solution. The creation and maintenance of the ledger is currently a costly exercise. Blockchain solutions are ideal for data records that are meant to be shared between partners in a network where transparency and collaboration are important.
Specifically, blockchain could be considered appropriate when:. Blockchain databases can be categorized into two main types — public and private. Bitcoin is an example of a public blockchain, with thousands of computer nodes distributed worldwide doing the work required to verify the network.
Attributes of a public blockchain include public access, a high degree of control, a large distribution of work which can result in fewer verified transactions per unit time, and transaction verification and overall security by Proof of Stake or Proof Of Work approaches that enhance stability and security of the network.
Private blockchains, on the other hand, are more common in industry applications of blockchain technology. These type of blockchains have a less randomly distributed network nodes typically run by stakeholders , restricted access to the network, the potential for higher throughput and scalability, and transaction verification by authorized network participants. Hybrid blockchains are a recent approach: the blockchain in general is a public blockchain with an ability to designate data that is public and fully open vs.
Good quality data from clinical trials requires good security, proper content metadata and an immutable audit trail. Blockchain technology is a potential component of ensuring these capabilities.
Blockchain data integrity has the strength of cryptographic validation of each interaction or transaction, and the entirety of the set of records. Any data integrity issue in a blockchain results in an immediate indication of where and when the problem happened, along with the contributor of the offending transaction. Blockchain effectively allows proof of the integrity and provenance of the data independently of the production of the data. Blockchain-based, immutable, timestamped records of clinical trial results and protocols could potentially reduce the incidence of fraud and error in clinical trial records by eliminating the potential for outcome switching, selective reporting and data snooping.
Additionally, it is very difficult for researchers in the current environment of siloed informatics systems to share and maintain the provenance of data. Blockchain-based data systems could allow for seamless data sharing between organizations, thereby reducing data integrity issues stemming from errors and incomplete data.
As an example of this, researchers at University of California San Francisco UCSF recently developed a proof-of-concept method for using a private blockchain to make data collected in the clinical trial process immutable, traceable, and more trustworthy.
The researchers used data from a completed Phase II clinical trial and tested the resilience to tampering with the data through their proof-of-concept web portal service. They demonstrated effectively that data entry, storage, and adverse event reporting can be performed in a more robust and secure manner, could withstand attacks from the network, and be resilient to corruption of data storage.
Another example of blockchain technology in action was provided by scientist. The platform is designed to ensure data integrity in research data from clinical and preclinical stages of drug development that is submitted electronically to regulators.
To improve visibility of data quality and analysis, researchers from several different companies recently collaborated to develop TrialChain , a hybrid blockchain-based platform intended for application to biomedical research studies. This approach includes provisions to permit modifications of original data created as a routine part of downstream data analysis to be logged within the blockchain.
In addition, the use of a hybrid blockchain structure in TrialChain allows for public validation of results alongside the additional authorization required for full access to data.
Finally, pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, Amgen and Sanofi have teamed up to find the most effective ways to utilize blockchain technology, from ensuring data integrity to speeding up clinical trials and ultimately lowering drug development costs.
With the ability to deliver immutable timestamped records, audit trails and data provenance, in a highly secure and attributable manner, blockchain technologies could indeed have a huge impact on clinical research worldwide. As in other industries, blockchain also holds promise for reducing costs in many aspects of the drug lifecycle — from discovery to manufacturing.
From the ability to concisely and securely track data provenance as part of analytics to meeting regulatory serialization requirements in the supply chain, there are many interesting potential applications of blockchain technology. While the use of blockchain technology in clinical research is still in its infancy, there is much interesting activity in applying blockchain technology to solve clinical data management challenges.
Many pharmaceutical companies are forming outside partnerships and creating in-house initiatives to explore blockchain technologies in clinical research areas like patient recruitment, patient data sharing, data privacy, preventing data tampering and improving research reproducibility. As with the application of any new technology, biopharma companies looking to implement blockchain technology in their clinical research should consider working with a quality informatics consultant well established in the domain, and consider very deliberately how the technology will fit in the overall systems architecture.
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How Can Blockchain Be Implemented in the Life Sciences Ecosystem?
Open science is a new movement of science that aims to solve issues regarding low reproducibility of scientific results, difficulties of publishing insightful but uncommon articles, and overly subjective peer-review processes. Blockchain is a revolutionary technology that can provide transparency of scientific processes, ensure availability of scientific datasets and publications, and foster increased trust in scientific outcomes. Research on open science and blockchain is at an initial stage, and we are interested in a broad spectrum of topics that answer the question how blockchain can support open science. This is an umbrella topic since topics of interest change rapidly. A specific topic will be selected during a first meeting. Critical Information Infrastructures.
Research Papers
Blockchain technology has the capacity to make digital goods immutable, transparent, externally provable, decentralized, and distributed. Besides the initial experiment and data acquisition, all remaining parts of the research cycle could take place within a blockchain system. Attribution, data, data postprocessing, publication, research evaluation, incentivisation, and research fund distribution would thereby become comprehensible, open at will and provable to the external world. Currently, scientists must be trusted to provide a true and useful representation of their research results in their final publication; blockchain would make much larger parts of the research cycle open to scientific self-correction. Some claim that this bears the potential to be a new approach to the current reproducibility crisis in science, and could reduce waste and make more research results true. Data protection. Accessibility Statement.
Blockchain-enabled open science framework
Try out PMC Labs and tell us what you think. Learn More. FCC was responsible for conceptualisation, methodology, visualisation and writing - original draft; AB was in charge of the conceptualisation and writing - review and editing. We present a decentralised solution for managing scientific communication, based on distributed ledger technologies, also called blockchains. The proposed system aims to solve incentive problems displayed by traditional systems in scientific communication and publication.
Quantrade Journal of Complex Systems in Social Sciences
Blockchain UBC has published a number of research papers, through various academic partners and collobarative efforts. Explore more in detail through the list on this page. Skip to main content Skip to main navigation. Blockchain UBC. You are here Home Research Research Papers.
US20180323980A1 - Blockchain for open scientific research - Google Patents
As these products must undergo extensive testing before being approved for the public, gathering high-quality, reliable and statistically sound data is an important goal for all clinical research. There are, however, converging trends challenging the ability of legacy data management systems to establish and sustain data integrity throughout all phases of clinical studies:. Every once in a while, a technology comes along that has the potential to act as a significant disruptive force. Blockchain technology may very well be the next big disruptive technology and is likely to find applications in nearly every major industry to reduce cost, increase efficiency and more significantly, improve trust. Trust is foundational all businesses, and blockchain enables companies to seamlessly establish both trust and transparency in data-related business processes in a non-centralized and therefore scalable and cost-effective way.
Blockchain for science and knowledge creation: An intro and overview
Knowledge is vulnerable when centralized. We have seen it both in the East in censoring of Wikipedia in Turkey , and in the West during whitewashing of climate research data in the aftermath of the US presidential elections. There is a solution: Through decentralization and blockchain, it becomes possible to leverage otherwise wasted resources on your computers. For example, empty space on your hard drive or idle computing power.
Proceedings of the 2017 International Seminar on Social Science and Humanities Research (SSHR 2017)
The center brings together engineering, law, and economics faculty, as well as post-docs, students, and visitors, to work on technical challenges in the field. The center's primary mission is to support the thriving ecosystem by developing new technologies needed to advance the field. Beyond its research mission, the center runs an extensive education and outreach program, including on-campus courses, MOOCs, workshops, and conferences for the general blockchain community. The seminar is on hiatus due to the pandemic, but the schedule is available online. Following the success of the previous Stanford blockchain conferences in , , , and , the next conference will be held on Aug. A monthly seminar on the latest projects and blockchain research.
Researcher (m/f/d) Computer Science with experience in Blockchain
We are pleased to announce that our co-founder Dr. This issue will focus on the topic of Decentralized Finance DeFi. In the post, further information on the Call for Papers, deadlines and other topics are provided. We published a revised version of the working paper, which provides a comprehensive review of the so-called "Musk Effect" and includes new findings. The study shows the significant impact that the social media activity of influential individuals can have on cryptocurrencies. The BRL presented research findings on the topic of Bitcoin's energy consumption.
Blockchain and Earth Observation: a white paper
Enter the Concordium ecosystem. Leverage the unique features of the first layer-one blockchain with built-in identity layer. Concordium builds a vibrant ecosystem of science, technology and business partners.
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