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If you have a spare weekend and want some spicy reading, go through some of the published and detailed reports of complaints, filed with the FDA, which relate to cases of mishandling, negligence, and patent protocol breach during the Covid-19 clinical trials of one known pharma conglomerate in the USA. Spoiler alert: it is frightening.
I invite you to resist the temptation of despair and recommend that you double click on what could be a clear example of where blockchain can come in and revolutionize the health business, for good.
Speeding it
The Covid-19 crisis required a strong, and especially fast, response. We, as a global community, had to find a vaccine asap. This was the mantra of politicians, big pharma, health professionals and businesses. Our world needed to get back to normal. We decided to stretch thin. Public pressure forced health professionals at research organizations to move aggressively and 'break things,' if we want to use business jargon. This resulted in some ' with the exact magnitude to be quantified ' cases of inaccuracy in data registration and patients' privacy respect. This piece is not about investigating into what happened, but it's about tech. Technologies like Blockchain can exactly help with that, with fast, secure, and scalable registration of massive amount of data, instantly made available to the public for analysis, further research, and action.
The Covid-19 crisis showed us, very clearly, that when it comes to the public good (think of health, education, and finance), we need to automate and protect at scale every single transaction and record belonging to every single individual. We went as far as making vaccination mandatory: there is no exercise of power without accountability. On one side, we have the obligation to intervene and limit the risk of contagion and massive deaths. And, we have the right to access the full stream of data and facts (properly anonymized) that drove that decision. This is what Blockchain is for. We desperately need speed, but have to compromise on accuracy, due to bandwidth issues with our health and surveillance systems? This is no longer acceptable. Blockchain is fast and secure at the same time.
Faking it
The most disillusioned readers of the complaint files may think that a bigger agenda ' fixing the Covid-19 drama ' forced multiple actors on the research side to look the other way and make sure timelines were met on time and in full. This is the ultimate question: what if someone, during those intense war days, faked the results of some ' even if it is a small portion ' of the clinical trials? Just hold that hypothesis for a second. Again, our role here is not to write up a full investigation into this matter. Having a full, transparent, immutable record of every single action and transaction of a delicate research process like the Covid-19 corpus of trials is a necessary tool to hold all actors accountable for what they are doing. In case of legal proceedings, this would be the minimum viable data (MVD) set that we would expect for the generation of a vaccine, which could save us, or kill some of us. Blockchain is exactly the tech stack to power that MVD. We need to force it, in some cases, for a broader good ' which is a totally legitimate political decision ' some would say? It is ok with me, if we have a full record of what happened; a record that cannot be massaged ad hoc by pharma, public institutions, or a few bad actors. Blockchain can help there, to keep all actors honest and accountable.
An example of real-life applications of Blockchain being applied to MedTech is Circular, a new and revolutionary Layer 1 protocol, which was created exactly to help revolutionize health.
We, humans, are not perfect and obviously have a bias for action, when in danger. It is in our nature. When it comes to act in a case of massive pandemic, we owe it to ourselves to be fast and driven, while being accurate, respectful of everyone's privacy and transparent, top down and bottom up.
We are not going to lose momentum and stamina. We just need Blockchain. Now, we have it.
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