We are delighted to announce that Curlew Research will be leading a conference workshop at BioIT World Expo on May 23rd 2017– “An Intro To Blockchain In Life Science“.
Blockchain technology, also known as “distributed ledger technology” (DLT) is currently one of the hottest tech items around. Every day, blockchain is being touted as a catalyst for revolution in industries as diverse as diamond trading, land registry, finance, and not least — healthcare. It’s important for life science R&D, biotech and especially pharma R&D stakeholders to understand DLT’s place in their fields, and where their businesses could potentially be disrupted by it in the near future.
In this workshop Richard Shute, Curlew Research Consultant, along with two other experts in the field, Maurizio Viviani, Lead Developer at Encrypgen, and Adrian Gropper, CTO of Patient Privacy Rights, will delve into blockchain’s potential impact across the drug discovery process.
Richard will, with the workshop attendees, try to identify one or more “killer apps” for DLT in the medicines value chain. Looking across the drug discovery process — from target identification to clinical, and from lead optimization to manufacturing and drug supply — he will try to highlight where “the blockchain” could have the biggest impact.
Maurizio will describe the theory and application of blockchain technologies in general and apply it to a case study of Encrypgen’s techniques for putting large volumes of genomic data onto a blockchain efficiently, yet providing maximum security and privacy, which are hallmarks of blockchain in general. With the workshop attendees he will work through the limitations and some solutions to the use of blockchain tech for genomic data in particular.
Finally, Adrian will discuss the fact that there are many blockchains, and that different aspects of trust will be addressed through different blockchains. Blockchain-based identity management will have a huge impact on consent and authorization. Also, blockchains enable decentralization, so genomes as well as social determinants of health, poorly supported by centralized electronic health records, EHRs, will tend to shift to self-sovereign technologies.
Now that the workshop is over, you can view the slides used by Richard Shute here.
Hello,
Are there similar workshops to this one planned? I am particularly interested in the discussion of killer apps for DLT in Life Sciences, specifically drug development.
Best,
Kurt
Hi Kurt,
Thanks for your interest in Curlew Research and the blogs. There are no plans to re-run the workshop in the near future, but watch out for an article building on the workshop output coming out in the autumn. We will blog on this as soon as it’s out there, so watch this space.
Regards,
Richard
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Thank you @techloyce for your interest in Curlew Research and in our blockchain activities. Keep watching our website and Twitter for more insights into, and our take on this exciting new technology.