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.
| Table of Contents | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Tuesday, August 30
Agenda:
- Confirm timeline, scope, and approach, or revise in specific
- Assign action items for report next steps
Attending: Scott S, Thomas, Jeff S, Ann V, Mattisse, Scott D, Thorsten, Jim H, Luk V, Marc, Kathleen, John M, Eve
Congrats to Thomas (and his students) and Adrian on their awards!
In Italy, law has a general structure and then specific cases separately. Ethereum's recent fork required recalculating to a point before the hack (this was in July). Is this a problem for us? Jim comments: DAO demonstrates a number of things - that you need legal framing and that even decentralized protocols depend on communities. Eve notes that many of today's technologies and techniques seem to undermine DLTs and similar in that they centralize to protect them: TTPs, trust frameworks, permissioning, etc. Scott D thinks undermining isn't necessary: e.g., a dairy coop or a partnership could overcome the need for the "poison of centralization" (Eve phrase). Since any realistic IAM system injects this poison today, and any sufficiently "wide-ecosystem" (cross-domain) distributed use case will likely need some element of IAM and/or governance to achieve its goals, can the circle be squared?
What are the techniques that temper the need for centralization-style governance? Can Matisse and Scott D discuss this on the list? We can add them to the report.
Do we need to write several reports? There are several themes here. One is about specific technologies being missing, e.g. (as Jeff S notes) a query language and specific techniques missing (as noted above), and one is about the central tension here. Alternatively, Eve suggests our six-month goal is to write the first broad report about the central tension given the many use cases that want to achieve empowerment.
Thomas, Eric, and Scott D have already been writing a paper called Computational Sovereignty. They can distribute it – there's definitely interest!
There's some support for one report with recommendations for the breakdown of several reports/maybe specs in future. Jim suggests adding analysis to break down "smart contracts" vs. generic blockchain. And there's support for putting a stake in terminology generally.
AI: Eve: Ensure Ann's list contributions get into the minutes more properly.
Thursday, August 25
Agenda/Discussion
- 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
Tuesday August 23
Agenda:
- Completing existing use-cases.
Attending: Matisse, Kathleen, John W., Jim, JohnM, Marc, Jeff,Thomas.
Thomas: Lets complete current-uses cases. Looking at the patient data sharing there at least 2 cases we could claim. (1) The patient consent is captured on a blockchain (which acts as a simple public notary); (2) Prefabricated contracts for accessing data, using data, sharing results (etc) is represented as a smart contract. John stated that privacy of the patient and unlikability are important aspects. Thomas: this requirements for privacy or anonymity is also true for financial transactions. Kathleen/John agrees.
Jeff: Can SC contain all the info regarding all the possibilities, turn around time, etc. Is it practical, deployable, or even untenable. Currently they use databases etc for this purpose. Kathleen: Precision Mdecinie Medicine requires precise patient identification. John: we need to evolve slowly into complex cases. Tease out components. John: there is complexity as to how researchers view data and management aspects of studies/trials. Each project has admins, assistants, CROs, org that collect research info. Most orgs have standardized consent forms. What is we move these into a slightly changed format so that it can be used on a blockchain. This allows the (new) infrastructure to develop gradually. Jim: such a format is what we (Jim) is working on. Using SC to automate some of the functions. Must work on/off the blockchain. Address complexity thru layering.
...
Thomas: yes, lots of similarities. We need to tease-out common components and building block. Kathleen/John: there are 2 usages of blockchain: (a) for recording, and (b) for enforcing. One can live without the other. Incrementally can move forward with one or the other, not both. John: part of the research statement and agreement, it should call out that it has to make use of blockchain and SC in a given way. Transparency addresses through preconditions (e.g. pseudo-identifier) defined elsewhere. We just define the usage/functionality that it provides. . Also satisifes clinical obligations wrt patient rights/autonomy. Katheleen: there's an org working on this called "Patient Choice" project. Kathleen will email URL.
Thursday August 18
Agenda:
...
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.
...