Mayo Clinic taps into blockchain technology for clinical trial design

Dutch blockchain startup Triall on Thursday announced Announced a partnership with Mayo Clinic, a US non-profit medical center, to optimize clinical trial design and research data management. Starting this September, Triall’s eClinical platform will support a two-year, multicenter Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension clinical trial involving 10 research sites across the United States and his more than 500 patients.

The software supports activities such as data acquisition, document management, research monitoring and consent. As Triall said, the purpose of this collaboration is to demonstrate an immutable public ledger audit trail through blockchain technology to enhance the integrity of clinical trials. Investigators, regulators, and stakeholders can review and evaluate such trial-related data with confidence, knowing that no one can change the record.

In the United States, the median cost of clinical trials investigating new drugs or treatments is estimated at $19 million. Approval rates for new chemicals and biologics typically hover between 10% and 20% from preclinical to completion, often requiring years of research.

Launched in 2018, Triall commercialized its first blockchain product, Verial eTMF. This allows researchers to generate verifiable evidence of the authenticity of clinical trial documents such as patient diagnostic data. Additionally, through his eClinical, the company is developing an API that will allow existing third-party clinical trial software providers to connect to Triall’s blockchain infrastructure. Native TRL tokens are designed for ecosystem utilities such as reward payments to clinical trial participants. If successful, Triall will further collaborate with Mayo Clinic in the field of decentralized medical research.