From Clinical Trials to Highly Trustable Clinical Trials: Blockchain in Clinical Trials, a Game Changer for Improving Transparency?

Abstract

Quality of clinical research is undermined by severe misconducts, errors, frauds, which are detrimental to the trust it should arouse. In this perspective article, we show how Blockchain may trace and control processes of Clinical Trials preventing from the above issues or at least discourage them since they would become traceable and opposable. Then, we propose a short and doable program where, amidst the complex stream of events that a Clinical Trials consist of, we select sensitive and misconduct-prone steps that could dramatically benefit from Blockchain, through either simple core features as traceability and incorruptibility of its data registration, or through more refined automation tools called Smart Contracts.