Some medical ethicists endorse NFTs-this is the reason for the news and research

The epidemic has spread rapidly since artist Beeple sold digital art for nearly $ 70 million. Cryptocurrency worldTrap crypto evangelists, and even the general public. This is because this piece was a non-fungible token (NFT), essentially a unique digital trading card that also served as a proof of ownership of physical or digital objects. Every time this digital asset changes hands, the exchange is recorded in a kind of public ledger called. Blockchain.. Beeple’s success sent other prices NFT soars, Those values ​​may not be persistent. But under all the hype and speculation, there is a real use for blockchain. One such possible application is to attach an NFT to medical data.Ethicists say this technology is Rebuild control over patient medical information Then let people track the biological samples taken from their bodies.

Currently, medical information is digitized with electronic health records. But doctors aren’t the only ones who want to use that data.Medical researchers and businesses buy large, anonymized datasets New marker of illness, Training diagnostic algorithms Create Risk calculator Evaluate candidates for surgery. While this work is useful, Kristin Kostick-Quenet, a medical ethicist at Baylor University, says it also creates ongoing ethical challenges. “Confidential personal health information is regularly accessed and exchanged outside the patient’s consciousness using legal means,” she says. According to Kostick-Quenet, existing systems benefit some companies that control access to health records, rather than centralizing the interests of patients whose data is being used.

In the article published in ChemistryShe and her co-author NFT may provide a solution.. For patients, owning an NFT of medical data is like creating a kind of sentry to protect their personal information. Data will continue to be stored in a secure encrypted database, but the NFT will act as a gatekeeper, tracking who requested access, who was granted access when, and publicly recording all of those actions. increase. NFTs are particularly well suited for this because they use a technology called smart contracts. It’s basically an if / then statement that allows you to predetermine how to use the item. Instead of making a decision each time someone uses the data, the patient can create parameters. For example, specify that only academic researchers and cancer treatment research should be accessible. Smart contracts automate that decision. ..

Marielle Gross, a technology and women’s health care researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, further expands the use of NFT to cover biological samples such as tumors physically removed from patients and organoids made from patient tissues. I want to “Morally speaking, there is really no good reason why a patient is not the owner of his sample and its derivatives,” she says.

In the paper published in JMIR Bioinformatics and BiotechnologyGross et al. Claim that NFT technology may help Avoid many problems It was highlighted in the story of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who sought treatment for cervical cancer in 1951. As part of her trial, doctors at Johns Hopkins University took tissue samples of her tumor, but unknowingly sent them to another researcher. Or agree. So-called HeLa cells survived and prospered in the laboratory, making them essential for a wide range of medical research. Unknown to Lux, her contributions have made breakthroughs in immunology, cancer research, and even the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. If someone in Lacks’ position owns an NFT for their cell, that person can be tracked How to use the cell.. Gross considers HeLa cells to be perfectly compatible with NFTs. This is because these biological samples are both finite (having unique physical properties) and infinite (can be duplicated and copied like digital assets). “Their duplication and widespread ability are really like the Kimera of two physical and digital entities,” she says.

However, not everyone sees NFTs as a viable option for tracking medical data. For one thing, it is not clear whether a patient owns his or her data, even after the data has been entered into an electronic health record. “The secret to data and information is different from property that transfers ownership and renounces rights and claims,” ​​said Lisa Lee, managing director of the Institutional Review Board under President Obama. increase. She says patients share information with doctors and medical systems that collect their information. The patient has the right to see it and use the data responsibly, but may not have the absolute right to control what happens.

In some cases, Ken Goodman, a bioethicist at the University of Miami, suggests that patients should not be allowed to opt out of sharing information. These data are very important to public health. Goodman points out, for example, that sharing information about COVID-19 positive rates is important for understanding the risk of infection. During a pandemic.. That said, he suggests that NFTs may build confidence in the healthcare system by giving people a stake in the healthcare system and encouraging them to share data with scientists. But first, we need to investigate further why some people prefer not to share data, and whether they really want some kind of fine-grained control over medical information or biological samples that NFTs allow. “I think it’s an exciting idea,” he says. “I think it deserves a lot of research.”

In addition to ethical issues, there are still technical issues to be resolved before people start creating NFTs from tumors and health records. For one thing, creating NFTs and maintaining blockchains currently requires huge amounts of power and incurs annoying environmental costs. Another reason, Kostick-Quenet states that NFTs alone are not sufficient to protect a database of personal medical information. If someone accesses and copies such a database, the database can be exchanged outside the public ledger, regardless of the patient’s wishes, without transparency. Additional structural support, such as strong data encryption, may help. Another way to implement the system is to use federated learning. This is a technique that allows machine learning algorithms to learn from datasets held in different locations without extracting the information itself.

Also, with some medical data, there is no technology that can protect patient privacy. “You can’t anonymize anything in the genome,” Gross says. DNA associated with tissues and cells is a unique marker that automatically identifies its source and makes anonymity impossible. However, she also argues that anonymity is often not designed to benefit patients, including the example of Henrietta Lacks. “It’s about facilitating the use of that person’s data, in this case the organization, without being accountable by a third party,” she says. “If anything, the privacy protected by anonymization is the privacy of the researcher, not the patient.”

Finally, Gross says there needs to be a lot of public education about what NFTs are and how they work before patients give informed consent. As a result, mass adoption can be time consuming. However, NFT proponents hope that this technology will give patients more transparency and some control over the post-mortem world of data.These tokens may not be very viral DogecoinBut they may still be worth it: a marker of appreciation and respect for what the patient contributes to medical knowledge.