This page records the Discussion Group's meeting notes for August 2016. We meet Tuesdays for 30 minutes at 7:30am PT / 10:30am ET / 3:30pm UK / 4:30pm CET. We meet Thursdays for 30 minutes at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm UK / 8pm CET. US times are normative during daylight saving time changes. We use Kantara Line A (US +1-805-309-2350, Skype +99051000000481, international options, web interface, more info, code 4022737) and http://join.me/findthomas for screen sharing. See the DG calendar for our full meeting schedule. Previous meeting minutes are here: July.
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- Reviewing use cases to determine if there are common building blocks amongst themselves
- i.e Template Smart Contract for consent
Attending: JohnW, Ann Vroom, Jim Hazard, Jeff Stollman, JohnM, Kathleen, Matisse, Marco, Thomas
- Thomas refers to paper at Barclays (one side prose <=> one side code) http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/C.Clack/SCT2016.pdf
- discussion ensues re: consent, patient, form etc
- Why/What goes on blockchain and/or recorded in smart contract (assuming BC and SC not necessarily the same)
- Needs a reference to form of consent
- Needs record (publicly anonymous) record of patient agreeing to consent
- Record of other researchers requesting access so Alice in the loop
- Forms (consents & questions), Responses from patient, requests for access, ledger contains uuid reference to consent
- Kathleen and John M. working on this and will work with Common Accord for common representation?
- Interedger? as term of art for connecting blockchains
- Options (Ann?):
- Alice is party to a contract (consent) with a researcher - state of contract entered to blockchain
- New researcher comes along:
- Alice can be notified OR
- New contract updates old contract and new version entered into blockchain
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The biggest question: Is there a role for the blockchain? The three lightbulbs highlight the particular steps where this comes into play. (Scott suggested to the chat that the lightbulbs in the recent edit can be broken out into individual use cases. As mentioned on the call, the use cases will form an ontology, these would be different instances of “record X on a ledger”, with a different X for each lightbulb.) Thomas notes there is a bit of a crisis of repeatability in research. Could that be addressed with the new technologies somehow? John suspects that this is where putting the protocols (the descriptions of the studies) themselves on the blockchain would be more productive, and this is where his mention of a "predecessor or stereotypical case" of Human Research Consent could encompass that solution. He points to https://clinicaltrials.gov.
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