Ep. 68: Clinical Trials on Hyperledger – Rama Rao (CEO Bloqcube)
Rama Rao is the CEO of Bloqcube, a startup he started in 2017 that uses blockchain technology to improve clinical trials operations and research data management. Rama is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience in life sciences having spent most of his career as a finance executive at Eli Lilly and Novartis.
Company Website: https://bloqcube.com/
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Show Notes
•Introduction to Rama’s background
•Why did you get into healthcare?
•How does your experience in pharma shape your understanding of clinical research innovation?
•Eroom’s law is the observation that drug discovery is becoming slower and more expensive over time, despite improvements in technology, a trend first observed in the 1980s. The cost of developing a new drug roughly doubles every nine years.
•Origins of Bloqcube – value proposition
•How is the company structured? How big is the team?
•Why blockchain in healthcare?
•COVID-19 Clinical Trials/Studies
•How do you think the government has handled the COVID19 response so far?
•Remote Monitoring and Telemedicine
•What is your opinion on the decision to send COVID-19 data to HHS instead of CDC?
•Describe the actual User Experience – Patients, Providers, researchers, others
•General technical specifications (architecture) of Bloqcube
oData privacy & Encryption security
oIdentity verification
oETMF – Electronic Trial Master Form
oStripe payment processing
oOpen Source software
oProtocol layers – Hyperledger fabric
oAre you issuing tokens?
•Bloqcube was reviewed by HITLAB
•Smart Contracts for clinical trials
•Describe C2TA™ (Continuous Clinical Trial Accounting) and why it’s important – “this minimizes reconciliations and integrates into existing financial systems and closes the loop with a financial planning record indicating the budget and actuals.”
•Will this improve patient adherence monitoring during clinical research?
•Regulatory audits and blockchain auditability
•How do you make money?
•Technical and social adoption challenges
•Industry Partners and concept traction – existing partners and pilot projects (NTT DATA partnership, results of India diabetes observational study pilot)
•Can you describe the competitive landscape and any direct competitors to your business?
•Who is your favorite scientist of all time? Norman Ernest Borlaug, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Albert Einstein
Mentioned guests –
Jim Nasr: https://soundcloud.com/healthunchained/ep-59-tracking-covid19-on-hashgraph-jim-nasr-ceo-acoer
Dr. Alex Cahana: https://soundcloud.com/healthunchained/insights-from-the-crypto-sherpa-dr-alex-cahana-venture-partner-cryptooracle
News Corner
https://www.transgene.fr/wp-content/uploads/20200709-PR-Hypertrust-Transgene-final-EN.pdf
The life sciences industry continues to develop new immunotherapies that can specifically treat a patient based on their personal genes and diagnosis. A recent partnership was announced on July 9th 2020, between Transgene, a French biopharma company, and Hypertrust Patient Data Care, a blockchain-based supply and data chain company. Emerging personalized treatments have a massive need for trustworthy and decentralized solutions, due to the strong cross-company collaborative nature of the production process.
Developing new clinical protocols for personalized medicine is one of the toughest supply and data chain problems facing the industry and it’s great to see that blockchain technologies are beginning to be tested at the enterprise level.
Health Unchained Links
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Bert’s Blockchain and Healthcare Weekly Newsletter: https://bert.substack.com/
