David Brown, Science and Program Director at Qatar Precision Medicine Institute, discusses how blockchain technology is the answer to the healthcare industry’s challenges with storing genomic data.
The explosion of genomic data and the rise of precision medicine is transforming healthcare as we know it.
Precision medicine is an emerging approach to medical care that uses an individuals’ phenotypes and genotypes to tailor disease treatment and prevention. Its full potential lies in enabling medical practitioners to access and evaluate more specific information about their patients – otherwise known as genomic data – so that they can recommend the right therapeutics strategies.
While there is understandable excitement about the promise, there are also some significant challenges that must be overcome if it is to become mainstream.
One of the big barriers holding back precision medicine is the health systems’ ability to store and access large amounts of data, safely and securely. While data storage technology, such as the cloud, offers solutions to access such data from any place and device, the security and data integrity, have not yet been addressed.
As precision medicine becomes increasingly integral to our healthcare system, the industry will no doubt face a number of technical and ethical challenges; how can we ensure the privacy of genetic data? How can we be trusted to share this data safely? And ultimately who owns this data?
Any long-term genomic data storage solution will need to guarantee individuals have control and protection of their data, whilst at the same time provide access to clinicians and biomedical researchers.
This is where blockchain comes in.
So, what is blockchain and how does it work?
Many of us will have heard of blockchain, but don’t necessarily understand what it is or how it works.
Created 30 years ago, the technology was originally used as a secure public ledger to support the cryptocurrency network. Nowadays most will explain blockchain as an incredibly large database. However, what makes a blockchain unique to other databases is the way the data is structured.
A blockchain structures its data into groups, or blocks, that are chained together. When these blocks reach their storage capacity, they are chained onto the previously filled block; any new information that follows will be put into a newly formed block and added to the chain once filled. These chains can continue forever and ever.
Unlike other databases, blockchain is used in a decentralised way, meaning that the data entered is irreversible and no single person or group has control of the information. This makes blockchain an incredibly secure way of storing data.
Applying blockchain to medicine
The core function of genomics big data platforms is to collect personal genetic data for application and sharing. What makes blockchain an ideal solution is it addresses both the patients’ needs – a secure and transparent way to store their data – and also the data sharing requirements of healthcare and pharma professionals.
Blockchain facilitates direct interaction between data providers (users) and buyers (pharma companies, research institutes), without the need for a trusted third party. This is achieved through a timestamped immutable system of blocks containing data, which allows anyone with a connected system, anywhere in the world, to access the data as long as they have authorisation.
Meanwhile, cryptographic keys maintain the anonymity of users during the data exchange. This means buyers can utilise the information to study genetic patterns in a given population without compromising the privacy of the individual. This open, but secure, transfer of data is crucial in enabling the development of drugs and other therapies based on genomic profiles.
Aside from accessing the data for research purposes, healthcare providers could also leverage blockchain to securely store patients’ medical records. For instance, when a medical record is generated and signed, it can be written into the blockchain, which provides patients with the proof and confidence that the record cannot be changed.
Blockchain also answers one of the major ethical questions around genetic data: who owns it? With blockchain the answer is no one. Since blockchain does not reveal anything specific or personal about the user and cannot be traced back to them, individuals are given complete control of their own data and are even able to monitor its usage.
The perfect solution?
In an age of personalised medicine, access to genetic data is a valuable commodity for medical professionals seeking to develop new therapies and diagnostics. We need to support this access if we are to accelerate medical advancements.
That said, we’ve seen first-hand from some of the privacy violations from social media companies that data ownership is an important and sensitive topic for individuals, and genomic data must be managed carefully. As the pharma and healthcare industries expand their use of genetic information, they will need to find storage solutions that will overcome these ethical challenges and give individuals peace of mind.
Blockchain could be a win-win solution for patients, healthcare providers and pharmaceutical researchers. For the individual it could be a safe way to store and keep track of their personal data. For researchers it could house unlimited amounts of data, and therefore the promise of more well-rounded studies. And for healthcare providers it could be the key to identifying links between genetic traits and conditions much more rapidly. For now, it seems blockchain provides the ultimate solution.