The Coming Marriage Between Open Pharma Research and Blockchain
Posted 13th March 2018 by Jane Williams
The pharmaceutical research industry is suffering from a lack of innovation, yet we see an exponential increase in new science and technologies. Open innovation, in the truest meaning, is a disruptive model that will greatly increase our joint chances of translating new research into treatments, but we need new ways of sharing and participating in collaborative drug research. Blockchain technologies can provide the digital infrastructure that allows trusted and secure transactions of research assets. Applying smart contracts on top of such infrastructure will further increase the speed of the life science ecosystem allowing exploration, co-creation, and transaction of research assets to happen in an unprecedented manner. In fact, we can’t afford to object to such a marriage between pharma open innovation and blockchain technologies.
The Blockchain: The First Steps Toward its Healthcare Transformation
Posted 7th February 2018 by Jane Williams
What is the blockchain?
According to a recent Forbes article: the blockchain is one of the most misunderstood technologies of 2017 (1). While most healthcare professionals have heard the term “blockchain” and are aware of the innovations in financial technology, few understand the fundamental principles behind the technology in order to speculate the impacts it will have on the healthcare industry, at hospitals, and for patients. This inability is common across sectors and can be attributed to the absence of any standard definition of blockchain technology. However, it is important that industry leaders have a firm basis for understanding it in order to foresee its impacts on their business. What follows is a list of key points for understanding the blockchain and enabling speculation on its impacts in healthcare:
Distributed Ledger Technology: Applications and implications
Posted 31st January 2018 by Jane Williams
This article was originally published on the Surrey CoDE blog in January 2018, and is published here with permission.
