Parkinson's disease research, sponsored by King's College
London, verifies clinical observation data using the Algorand
blockchain
LONDON, June 27,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- LabTrace, a blockchain
authentication system for data integrity and ownership
certification, today announces the completion of the first
experimental medicine study (ref ID: NCT03782753) to utilize its
on-chain notarization tool, a novel solution to proving the
provenance of medical research data. The study, sponsored by King's
College London (KCL), involved patients with Parkinson's disease.
By utilizing the Algorand blockchain, LabTrace has introduced
unprecedented transparency, accountability and security in the
verification of scientific research data.
There is growing concern that the exponential expansion of
digital data in healthcare and medical research is being
accompanied by a growing incidence of scientific
fraud. According to The Guardian, in 2023 "the annual
number of papers retracted by research journals topped 10,000 for
the first time," and "most analysts believe this figure is only the
tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud." One reason
cited for the increase in falsified data is the pressure to
generate successful, high-impact results, which afford the
researchers more recognition and career advancement
opportunities.
"Progress in science and medicine is critically dependent on the
quality of the data collected in our research studies, and we take
that responsibility very seriously," said professor Steve Williams, director of the Centre of
Neuroimaging Science at King's College London and principal study
investigator. "The integrity of research data is the bedrock of
medical breakthroughs and LabTrace's blockchain-based system gives
us the level of transparency we need to trust, track and
authenticate our data."
LabTrace's blockchain-based data authentication system offers a
unique and transparent solution to:
- Certify authorship and data provenance
- Establish and record a researcher's ownership rights to data
and discoveries
- Securely timestamp and log trial data, original works, ideas,
and inventions in an auditable fashion
- Support drug approvals and patent applications
- Protect against intellectual property and data theft
It achieves this by attaching unique Content IDs (CIDs), which
follow IPFS standards, to all recorded data. Each CID file receives
on-chain notarization by authorized parties–with user permissions
defined and controlled by an Algorand smart contract (ie Role-Based
Access Control). KCL implemented LabTrace as an additional layer of
immutable record-keeping and to demonstrate a viable path forward
for maintaining the integrity of digital medical data.
After surveying the blockchain landscape, LabTrace determined
that Algorand, a leading Layer-1 solution known for its
high-performance and reliability, was best suited to meet the
rigorous requirements of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries.
Specific advantages of Algorand are:
- Its Layer-1 smart contract programmability, which enables
role-based access control
- High processing throughput of 10,000 transactions (or on-chain
records) per second
- High certainty and instant transaction finality, which provides
an immediate and immutable warrant of information recorded to the
ledger.
Timestamps and notarizations that certify the trial findings can
be viewed here.
"This is an important achievement for our company, as it shows
that our solution can be readily adopted in experimental medicine
studies, managing data of any type," said Federico Turkheimer, professor at King's College
London and director of LabTrace. "We believe we have built a
solution to enable full data traceability in clinical trials and
boost scientific reproducibility in medical research."
"With AI expanding the scope and sophistication of potential
data manipulation and fraud, it is more important than
ever that researchers, regulators, and the public have trusted
sources of data," said Eric Wragge,
global head of business development and capital markets for the
Algorand Foundation. "Accurate data is the bedrock of
scientific progress everywhere, and we are honored that Algorand is
the blockchain upon which the Labtrace solution has been
built."
About LabTrace
LabTrace believes that certified and
verifiable data are the core for a trustworthy digital society. The
company is on a mission to enable full data traceability in
clinical trials and boost scientific reproducibility in medical
research. To further this goal, LabTrace has built
a blockchain-based system for the secure, GDPR compliant,
immutable notarisation of digital data. For more information, visit
www.labtrace.io.
About Algorand Foundation
Algorand's mission is to
power a world where information has integrity and innovative ideas
can scale. The Algorand Foundation supports Algorand's rapidly
growing ecosystem by providing a best-in-class developer
environment, supporting key infrastructure and setting technical
standards, offering comprehensive support to builders and
entrepreneurs, and providing the infrastructure for
decentralized governance.
Founded by Turing Award-winning cryptographer Silvio Micali in 2019, Algorand has grown into a
vibrant ecosystem of developers, entrepreneurs, and enterprise
partners that benefit from institutional-grade certainty and
resilience, while features like low fees, instant finality, and a
minimal carbon footprint also appeal to the protocol's millions of
retail users. Builders of all kinds can use common programming
languages like Python to develop advanced apps and protocols that
solve important problems at a global scale: instant payments in war
and disaster zones, self-sovereign identity for the
disenfranchised, supply-chain traceability for global commerce,
permissionless protocols addressing financial inclusion, and the
creation of entirely new markets through tokenization, to name a
few. To learn more and start your journey on Algorand, visit
algorand.foundation.
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SOURCE Algorand Foundation