Converging blockchain and next-generation artificial intelligence technologies to decentralize and accelerate biomedical research and healthcare

Abstract

The increased availability of data and recent advancements in artificial intelligence present the unprecedented opportunities in healthcare and major challenges for the patients, developers, providers and regulators. The novel deep learning and transfer learning techniques are turning any data about the person into medical data transforming simple facial pictures and videos into powerful sources of data for predictive analytics. Presently, the patients do not have control over the access privileges to their medical records and remain unaware of the true value of the data they have. In this paper, we provide an overview of the next-generation artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies and present innovative solutions that may be used to accelerate the biomedical research and enable patients with new tools to control and profit from their personal data as well with the incentives to undergo constant health monitoring. We introduce new concepts to appraise and evaluate personal records, including the combination-, time- and relationship-value of the data. We also 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.

Applications of Blockchain Technology for Data-Sharing in Oncology: Results from a Systematic Literature Review

“…The research works were performed in the following countries: USA (4 studies), Switzerland (2 studies), and Germany, Iraq, Taiwan, Italy, China (1 study per country). However, one has to note that based on the affiliations of the authors, some of the works were done in the framework of international collaboration, such as collaboration between Switzerland and USA [2] as well as USA and several European countries [5].…”

“…As shown in Table 1, all the selected studies propose to employ BCT in the following application domains: datasharing for primary patient care [2][3][4][5][6]8], conducting medical research [2][3][4][5][6][8][9][10][11], and optimization of the pharmaceutical supply chain processes aiming to ensure the absence of the counterfeit drugs on the market [3,7,12,13]. Most of the proposed approaches are presented as prototypes.…”

“…The possibility of using emerging blockchain technology (BCT) for healthcare data management has recently raised major attention in both industries and academia [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Blockchain is a peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology that provides a shared, immutable, and transparent append-only register of all the actions that have happened to all the participants of the network.…”

Geospatial blockchain: promises, challenges, and scenarios in health and healthcare

“…Nevertheless, we expect blockchain technologies to get increasingly powerful and robust, as they become coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) [60] in various real-word healthcare solutions. AI-mediated health data exchange on blockchains will play important roles in shaping the future of these technologies in healthcare [61]. …”

Could Blockchain technology add value to surgical outcomes research?

“…Smart contracts allow the performance of credible transactions without third parties. These transactions are trackable and irreversible” . This approach could transform our thinking about trial design and might produce truly verifiable and immutable data which in turn could lead to better data reproducibility.…”