Track 9: Blockchain in Pharma, R&D, and Healthcare

Blockchain is becoming increasingly adopted to address the perennial networking challenges of visibility, integrity, security, and speed for data management in pharma, R&D, and healthcare. Innovative personalized therapies are driving this shift of proprietary data-driven life sciences supply chains, from basic research to R&D to clinical trials to manufacturing to patient. During the Inaugural Blockchain in Pharma, R&D, and Healthcare track, early adopters share their experiences on how this tool is empowering their management of end-to-end life science networking ecosystems.

Final Agenda

Tuesday, April 16

7:00 am Workshop Registration Open and Morning Coffee


8:0011:30 Recommended Morning Pre-Conference Workshops*

W7. Blockchain 101

12:304:00 pm Recommended Afternoon Pre-Conference Workshops*

W12. Data Science Driving Better Informed Decisions

* Separate registration required.

2:006:30 Main Conference Registration Open

4:00 PLENARY KEYNOTE SESSION
amphitheater

5:007:00 Welcome Reception in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing


Wednesday, April 17

7:30 am Registration Open and Morning Coffee

8:00 PLENARY KEYNOTE SESSION
Amphitheater

9:45 Coffee Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing


BUSINESS CASE FOR BLOCKCHAIN
Waterfront 1A

 

10:50 Chairperson's Remarks

Rama Krishna Rao, CEO, BloqCube, Inc.

11:00 Can We Use Blockchain for Clinical Trial Efficiency?

Basker Gummadi, MS, PMP, PgMP, Digital Innovation Deputy Director, Bayer

This talk will identify the business case for Blockchain in typical clinical trials, and how it can solve the patient’s lack of access to medical results, costs of maintaining data integrity and data provenance, and poor workflow in the patient informed consent process. Blockchain, in combination with other technology enablers, can provide possible solutions such as consolidating data from patient providers, offering a transparent final clinical summary report for regulatory authorities, and building a traceable patient consent workflow.

11:30 Patient Consent to Track Health Outcomes Using Blockchain Technology

Pravin Chandran, Director, Advisory, KPMG LLP

12:00 Enjoy Lunch on Your Own (Lunch Available for Purchase in Exhibit Hall)

ENABLING PRODUCTIVITY
Waterfront 1A

1:50 Chairperson’s Remarks

Richard Shute, PhD, Project Manager & Consultant, The Pistoia Alliance

1:55 Blockchain Technology in Preclinical R&D

Richard Shute, PhD, Project Manager & Consultant, The Pistoia Alliance

Blockchain technology has been identified as having high value in the preclinical R&D space with potential to help improve scientific data sharing. This presentation provides the background to this assertion and shows how distributed ledger technology could bring to life a vibrant, global scientific data sharing “market,” enabling better R&D collaboration and leading to improved R&D effectiveness.

2:25 Documen: An Open Source Decentralized Application (dAPP) for Clinical Trials

Jean-Remy Behaeghel, Senior Director, Clinical, Quality and Manufacturing Systems, Vertex Pharmaceuticals

The aim of the Đocumen project is to eliminate third parties from document transfers in clinical trial management and to create an industry-wide, tamper-proof ledger of document exchanges. Đocumen is a Decentralized Application (dAPP) and utilizes Quorum, an open-source framework for the deployment of a permissioned blockchain network. The guaranteed immutability, transparency, and fault-tolerance of an un-compromised blockchain produces a significantly more robust audit trail than any existing solutions.

2:55 Facilitating Encrypted, Decentralized, Permissioned Data Sharing Using Blockchain Technology

Marek Cyran, Senior Lead Scientist, Strategic Innovation Group, Booz Allen Hamilton 

3:25 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing, Meet the Experts: Bio-IT World Editorial Team, and Book Signing with Joseph Kvedar, MD, Author, The Internet of Healthy Things℠ (Book will be available for purchase onsite)

ENABLING PRODUCTIVITY (CONT.)
Waterfront 1A

4:15 Presentation to be Announced

Rama Krishna Rao, CEO, BloqCube, Inc.

4:30 PANEL DISCUSSION: Applying Blockchain in Pharma, R&D, and Healthcare

There is currently interest in applying blockchain to the life sciences community. Is it a solution? Potential applications include medical records, collection of clinical data/clinical trials, protection of intellectual property/contracts, integrity of supply chain – anywhere the data must be shared and secure. Panelists and evangelists from different sectors share their blockchain adoption, experiences and solutions.

Moderator: Richard Shute, PhD, Project Manager & Consultant, The Pistoia Alliance

Panelists:

Jean-Remy Behaeghel, Senior Director, Clinical, Quality and Manufacturing Systems, Vertex Pharmaceuticals

Pravin Chandran, Director, Advisory, KPMG LLP

Marek Cyran, Senior Lead Scientist, Strategic Innovation Group, Booz Allen Hamilton

Adrian Gropper, MD, CTO, Patient Privacy Rights

Basker Gummadi, MS, PMP, PgMP, Digital Innovation Deputy Director, Bayer
Rama Krishna Rao, CEO, BloqCube, Inc.

5:30 Best of Show Awards Reception in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing

Thursday, April 18

7:30 am Registration Open and Morning Coffee

8:00 PLENARY KEYNOTE SESSION & AWARDS PROGRAM
Amphitheater

9:45 Coffee Break in the Exhibit Hall and Poster Competition Winners Announced

GENOMICS AND PATIENT PRIVACY
Waterfront 1A

10:30 Chairperson’s Remarks

Adrian Gropper, MD, CTO, Patient Privacy Rights

10:40 The Value of Personal Information in the Age of Machine Learning

Adrian Gropper, MD, CTO, Patient Privacy Rights

The HIE of One Trustee project uses public blockchains, standards, and open source software to enable patient-controlled independent health records that can last a lifetime. This reference implementation informs blockchain standards development for identity, credentials, and reputation with groups that include W3C, IEEE, Kantara, OpenID Foundation, and others. The homeless health record project with Emory in Atlanta is a case study.

11:10 Tapping into a New Era of Genomics by Jointly Building the World’s Largest Precision Medicine Ecosystem

Axel Schumacher, PhD, Founder & CSO, Shivom

Moving precision medicine into the next era, researchers need an open & global ecosystem of genomic-, health- & socioeconomic data together with novel analysis capabilities. The Shivom Healthcare Platform enables people worldwide to anonymously share, own & manage their healthcare data. Researchers can access the data & study cohorts, combined with a library of bioinformatics pipelines, and newest AI-algorithms to make data-sets actionable.

11:40 Nebula – A Privacy-Focused Personal Genomics Service

Dennis Grishin, MSc, CSO, Nebula Genomics

Nebula Genomics uses cryptography to empower consumers and patients to stay in control of their personal genomic data. Our user-centric genomics platform enables researchers to generate data on demand, access it in an ethical and transparent manner and more easily engage study participants.

12:10 pm Enjoy Lunch on Your Own (Lunch Available for Purchase in Exhibit Hall)

1:20 Dessert Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Viewing

CLINICAL TRIALS
Waterfront 1A

1:55 Chairperson’s Remarks

Jay Bergeron, Director, Translational Research Business Technologies, Pfizer

2:00 CASE STUDY: Cross-Industry Collaboration Evaluating How Blockchain Can Transform the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industry, Part of Emerging Trends & Technology PhUSE Workgroup

Disa Lee Choun, Director Head of Innovation, Global Clinical Sciences & Operations, UCB

Adama Ibrahim, Associate Director, Clinical Operations, Biogen

This presentation will cover an understanding of the landscape in the pharma and healthcare settings, explore the areas where blockchain could be used, and present two detailed use cases (a. Drug Supply Chain using Smart Contracts; b. Patient Data Access/Transparency) to support future development and implementation for proof of concept.

3:00 Applying a Digital Rights Blockchain to Patient Data Exchange: Simulating Patient Trial Matching with the Bitmark Blockchain

Jay Bergeron, Director, Translational Research Business Technologies, Pfizer

The use of blockchains to enable complicated multiparty processes, pertinent to many patient use cases, generally requires blockchain customization or supplemental applications. A multiparty clinical trial matching simulation was implemented using only the “Bitmark” digital rights blockchain. The simulation’s development inspired the design of other blockchain applications based on the digital rights model, including biomarker data management and processing.

3:30 Securing Clinical Trial and Biological Experiment Data with the Blockchain

Lu Yu, PhD, Instructor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson University

A bio-statistician survey found 31% of respondents active in medical research had knowingly committed fraud. The FDA mandates an inviolable audit trail, but when there are large financial stakes it is hard to believe this data will remain unchanged. One approach is to secure this data using the blockchain, but blockchain discussions maintain that data is globally available and transparent. This is not desirable for HIPAA or proprietary information. This talk explains how these issues are addressed by a prototype developed by Clemson University, University of Tennessee Chattanooga and the Medical University of South Carolina. We specifically address the differences between blockchain hype and reality.

4:00 Conference Adjourns


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