Blockchain and Clinical Trial: Securing Patient Data

This book aims to highlight the gaps and the transparency issues in the clinical research and trials processes and how there is a lack of information flowing back to researchers and patients involved in those trials.

Lack of data transparency is an underlying theme within the clinical research world and causes issues of corruption, fraud, errors and a problem of reproducibility. Blockchain can prove to be a method to ensure a much more joined up and integrated approach to data sharing and improving patient outcomes. Surveys undertaken by creditable organisations in the healthcare industry are analysed in this book that show strong support for using blockchain technology regarding strengthening data security, interoperability and a range of beneficial use cases where mostly all respondents of the surveys believe blockchain will be important for the future of the healthcare industry.

Another aspect considered in the book is the coming surge of healthcare wearables using Internet of Things (IoT) and the prediction that the current capacity of centralised networks will not cope with the demands of data storage. The benefits are great for clinical research, but will add more pressure to the transparency of clinical trials and how this is managed unless a secure mechanism like, blockchain is used.