As blockchain technology has moved from cryptocurrency to other fields, one of New York’s medical schools has opened a center to study its use in healthcare.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the Institute for Next Generation Healthcare opened the Center for Biomedical Blockchain Research last week, with the aim of developing partnerships with companies looking to apply the technology to clinical medicine and biomedical research.
The center’s activities will include scholarly evaluations of blockchain’s applications to healthcare, partnership and consulting opportunities with companies working on them and building and testing systems within Mount Sinai.
Blockchain, which originated with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has been explored in healthcare in numerous ways. Earlier this month, New York-based Embleema – which has developed a blockchain network for sharing medical records – emerged from stealth mode with plans to launch a beta version of its technology and $670,000 of a $1 million round of seed funding that it plans to raise this year.
And beyond startup companies, larger players have gotten involved as well. In April, Humana, UnitedHealthcare, Optum, Quest Diagnostics and MultiPlan announced an effort designed to make it easier to share provider directory data.
Researchers have also been seeking to apply the technology to clinical trials. A commentary by French researchers published last year in the British Medical Journal concluded that blockchain provides a significant opportunity for clinical research because it can help structure more transparent, checkable methodology and, under certain conditions, check clinical trial integrity.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Also last year, Imperial College London played host to a hackathon specifically to explore the use of blockchain in clinical trials, in particular the potential to use blockchain technology to replace the operations of contract research organizations. The two finalists proposed using distributed ledger technologies to operate all the necessary transactions between drug companies running trials and the clinical trial sites where they take place. CROs are companies to which clinical trial sponsors outsource some or even all clinical trial functions. According to a report in April by Grand View Research, the global market for healthcare CROs is expected to reach $51.3 billion by 2024.
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