In this ongoing series, we showcase blockchain and dApp startups that have partnered with Reflective Ventures to solve entrenched industry problems using RChain’s revolutionary 3rd generation Blockchain platform.
In this episode, Shahan Khoshafian of Reflective Ventures is in conversation with Kamran Z. Khan, CEO of Translo, at the World Blockchain Conference.
Translo – A decentralized biomedical data marketplace
In today’s medical research ecosystem, data is fragmented and trapped in different silos. Due to data security and data privacy concerns, institutions and patients are discouraged from sharing biomedical data.
Antiquated methods of medical data collection include:
- Obtaining patient consent by hand
- Lack of interoperability in electronic healthcare records
- Regulatory constraints
After receiving his Master’s degree from Harvard in Biology, Kamran Z. Khan went on to conduct research in orthopedic surgery as a bioengineer at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he witnessed these shortcomings in medical research firsthand.
During his research, Kamran had an epiphany. “While I was thinking about data privacy and security issues in data sharing, I started to realize that these sort of problems were perfectly suited for blockchain to solve.”
RChain as the blockchain platform of choice
While there are quite a few blockchain protocols on the market, most do not scale well. Since Translo was envisioning a feature of Web 3.0, they had to choose a protocol 3.0. Thanks to its ability to run concurrent smart contracts and semantic data structures, RChain was the obvious choice. Most protocols cannot claim scalability because they’re longitudinal and can’t have multiple transactions being recorded on multiple chains at the same time.
Using RChain’s platform, Translo aims to solve these problems by creating interoperability in electronic healthcare record systems, incentivizing data sharing, and providing a mechanism for hospitals, research institutes, biopharma companies, and patients to share data in a decentralized, secure, and permissioned manner. Translo creates a mechanism to search and enroll patients based on specific genetic, therapeutic, demographic, and geographic criteria in clinical trials. With meaningful integrated data at scale, deep insights into diagnosis and treatments can be unlocked that previously could not be realized.
Data sharing for medical research
Translo allows hospitals, researchers, biopharma companies, and patients to share data in a decentralized, secure, and permissioned manner utilizing smart contracts.
“We’ve designed our whole platform with the needs of patients in mind. We firmly believe privacy is a fundamental human right, so data security and privacy in our system go well beyond regulatory compliance.” Kamran Z. Khan, CEO of Translo
The Translo platform ensures data security and data privacy at a granular level to encourage data sharing. Specifically, Translo uses Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning to auto-generate smart contracts for research-specific purposes. This makes it easy to share data with built-in Institutional Review Board (IRB) and HIPPA compliance modules.
Translo’s 1st dApp: Mito– A comprehensive enterprise solution for data capture and data sharing in clinical trials
Clinical trials generate mountains of data, requiring healthcare administrators to keep reliable, consistent records for peer review and to meet regulatory requirements. Disparate record-keeping systems can result in lost patient consent forms and medical histories that are incomplete or conflicting.
Translo’s Mito streamlines secure data capture and data sharing in clinical trials, improves the quality of research by bringing traceability and reproducibility to collected data, and creates efficiencies in time, cost, and risks. This all leads to lower drug prices and accelerated drug development.
Learn more about RChain at RCon3, Sept. 3-6, where the testnet will be launched. Register for RCon3 before August 15th and get 50% off with coupon code COUNTMEIN.
Reflective Ventures is a privately owned and managed venture firm committed to funding, incubating, and ultimately building the next generation of blockchain technologies and innovative dApps.