Blockchain-based Consent Management for Personalized Medicine

This multidisciplinary project will investigate the social, data, and technical issues surrounding design and implementation of a blockchain-based solution for the management of consent for the use of individuals omics data in medical research. Blockchains are distributed ledgers in which confirmed and validated blocks are organized in an append-only chain using cryptographic links. This project will study how blockchain technology can be used to provide users with greater control of, and reward for, the use of personal omics data, including genomics, proteomics, exposomics, phenomics, microbiomics and metabolomics, in medical research studies. It will also explore how the technical design of blockchain solutions may support privacy-preserving analysis of omics data with machine-learning. To achieve these research objectives, project team members will identify legal, regulatory and other requirements for the management of omics data and then use heuristic techniques and agile software development to implement a proof-of-concept blockchain solution that meets identified requirements for user consent of their omics data in studies to be run by the industry partner, Molecular You, as well as those to be run by its partners. “TO BE CONT’D”

Faculty Supervisor:

Victoria Lemieux

Student:

Ravneet Kaur

Partner:

Molecular You Corporation

Discipline:

Library and museum studies

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

Program: