The Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES), announced today a 10-year exclusive agreement with EXOCHAIN CORP to provide blockchain protocols as infrastructure to verify the secure identity of patients and doctors participating in clinical trials and enhance all aspects of clinical research and practice.
ACRES is a global non-profit multi-stakeholder alliance with more than 140 strategic allies worldwide. Their shared mission is to build, implement and maintain an integrated, comprehensive global system for clinical research that is effective, innovative and ethical.
A significant challenge to this goal is securing the health data of patients participating in clinical trials, a necessary step for its utilization and sharing amongst researchers and healthcare providers. EXOCHAIN’s new blockchain protocol addresses this challenge.
As Greg Koski, ACRES President and co-founder noted, “Precision medicine and personalized medicine is the future, where evidence-driven practice is integrated with, and informed by, high-quality research. Done correctly, this approach requires enterprise-scale access to information from millions of patients in a manner that ensures secure identity and access management across locations and generations. Innovative application of blockchain technology, as ACRES is now doing with EXOCHAIN, provides the key to the success of this new paradigm.”
EXOCHAIN CEO and co-founder, Bob Stewart, who also serves as ACRES CTO and CISO, explains, “We are excited to work with the ACRES BlueCloud network to implement ACRES-guided standards for effectively designing and conducting clinical trials, standards which are designed to improve patient outcomes by delivering the right care, at the right time, and which require information derived from analyses of massive sets of shared data. Success of this approach depends on trust, accessibility, and immutability of shared data and transparency. This is a perfect use case for EXOCHAIN’s LYNK utility token—enabling secure lifetime and transgenerational medical record sharing between providers and patients and then, their progeny.”
To start, EXOCHAIN will integrate its new blockchain protocol to enable secure identity and access management for the BlueCloud.net collaborative networking platform that provides ACRES universal interface for interactions among all stakeholders in the clinical research and healthcare enterprise, currently with more than 1.3 million users.
The new LYNK token-based blockchain protocol developed by EXOCHAIN is also well suited to support many other secure transactions critical to the clinical research and healthcare environment, including adverse event reporting and adjudication, remote study monitoring and regulatory oversight, as well as other highly-regulated endeavors in which secure and trackable data-transactions are essential.
Koski added, “We at ACRES are both excited and grateful for all that Bob Stewart and EXOCHAIN bring to this partnership and vision, including a significant contribution from EXOCHAIN to ACRES upon execution of our partnership agreement”.
EXOCHAIN co-founder Major Dan Winschel, APA-C, a former Special Forces medic, who is currently a physician’s assistant for Veterans Affairs said, “EXOCHAIN believes in the vision and mission of ACRES, and we intend to support it as vigorously as we can. This is the beginning of a special relationship and we are proud to be part of the ACRES unique mission, especially in support of Task Force Dagger Foundation’s Operation Restore.”
Stewart will be announcing and presenting details of the new EXOCHAIN LYNK protocol and the ACRES partnership at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, Jan 18-19, at the James L. Knight Center. Follow the events live via Twitter using hashtags #EXOCHAINLYNK #BTCMiami and #TNABC.
Task Force Dagger Foundation (TFD) Managing Director, Keith David, and the Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES) President and CEO, Greg Koski announced today that their non-profit charitable organizations have established a strategic alliance to address the grave health challenges impacting America’s elite special operations forces and their families through application of ACRES systems-based approaches to accelerate research and advance integrated care.
Task Force Dagger, drawn from units of the United States Special Operations Command USSOCOM, was the designation of the Special Forces elements that conducted the initial invasion of Afghanistan following the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11th, 2001.
Founded in 2009, the Task Force Dagger Foundation provides assistance not covered by the Military, DOD, VA, or their insurance to wounded, ill, or injured US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) members and their families, responding to urgent needs and providing next-generation health solutions for issues facing our service members, particularly in the areas of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS), and environmental exposures.
To date, Task Force Dagger Foundation has supported the US Special Operations Command with approximately $3.4M in support to over 1,600 families. The Foundation‘s Special Operations Forces (SOF) Health Initiatives Program takes a comprehensive systems biology approach known as Functional Medicine including advanced functional diagnostic health assessments such as biochemical and metabolic analysis, neuroendocrine testing, genetic testing and extensive diagnostic testing for occupational and environmental exposures such as heavy metals and other deployment related exposures.
The SOF Health Initiatives Program offers a comprehensive patient-centric systems approach to resolving health complaints and creates an environment conducive to healing and recovery based on each individual’s biochemical individuality and genetic uniqueness.
Under their alliance agreement, ACRES, a multi-stakeholder collaborative committed to accelerating clinical research and medicines development in the public interest, will apply the integrated systems model developed for the Moonshot on Cancer to the functional medicine paradigm adopted by the Task Force Dagger Foundation.
The SOF Health Initiatives Program has teamed up with multiple organizations such as the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, EXOS, Millennium Health TBI, The Brain Treatment Center (USC), CERESCAN, InLight Wellness and the Elk Institute to offer a complete start to finish program that merges and optimizes health and wellness.
ACRES Chief Technology Officer and Board member, Bob Stewart, and Geoffrey Dardia, Founding Director of the SOF Health Initiatives Program, masterminded the creation of the strategic alliance.
“ACRES people-focused, technology- supported model is based upon a coalition of major academic, government and private-sector organizations across the healthcare, clinical research and the medicines development domains. It is ideally suited and immediately applicable to the needs and goals of the Task Force Dagger Foundation’s SOF Health Initiatives and will help our special forces who sacrifice so much for us all. We are thrilled to be involved in this effort,” said Stewart.
Keith David shared Stewart’s enthusiasm. “We at the Task Force Dagger Foundation are pleased to partner with ACRES and work together to research, find, and provide solutions to issues faced by many of our service members, veterans, and their families. Our service members and their families are affected by the environmental and occupational hazards they encounter every day in the defense of our country. We must find the root causes of the illnesses, treat patients, and not merely manage diseases. We look forward to working with ACRES to be part of the solution for our brave warriors their families and collaboratively spread these solutions to all.”
The Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES), the global public-interest collaboration building a comprehensive system to transform clinical research, today announced a major second step toward full implementation of a multi-stakeholder shared information technology platform.
Technology solutions to enhance clinical trial performance are multiplying rapidly, but their usefulness is limited by their lack of connectivity and inter-operability. The new platform, dubbed Apollo, provides a shared infrastructure to support the functional integration of existing technologies, including electronic health records (EHRs), electronic data capture (EDC) systems and clinical trial management systems (CTMS), and to enable data exchange and aggregation critical for development and implementation of “big data” analytics essential for next-generation methods for remote monitoring and auditing, real-time pharmacovigilance, and continuous quality improvement enterprise-wide.
The first phase of the ACRES global IT platform, built on the BlueCloud® 2.0 Networking Technology developed by ACRES’ Austin-based strategic ally HealthCarePoint, provided a common platform for users worldwide to share vital research study documents, including training documentation and verifiable professional credentials essential for study start-up.
With nearly 1,000,000 current member-users in healthcare, research, and industry globally, the BlueCloud® is already benefiting sponsors, CROs, investigators, research sites, regulatory agencies and ethics committees worldwide. Now, the second phase of this global collaborative platform, spearheaded by ACRES strategic partner HealthIDx, includes initial roll-out of a federated trust framework for secure enterprise-wide identity management and single sign-on access to multiple end-user applications on the ACRES Apollo platform.
Apollo utilizes a proven cloud-based integration platform—originally developed by Detroit-based Covisint to support the complex supply chain, distribution and marketing logistics of the automotive industry—to enable seamless connectivity and inter-operability of multiple applications across the industry’s diverse stakeholders, including sites, sponsors, CRO/SMOs, regulatory agencies and supply chain providers and ethics committees.
“We are delighted to be working with ACRES and its many allies in this important effort,” said J. Scott Lowry, Founder and CEO of HealthIDx. “In this next phase, which includes secure cloud-based data exchange, aggregation, visualization, and analysis, we are addressing critical challenges of security, multi-user identity management, and fine-grain access control.” Lowry further noted that several technology applications, including the BlueCloud®, have been integrated via open APIs onto the ACRES Apollo platform and more such integrations are planned, including platforms of other organizations, thereby extending their power, connectedness and effectiveness.
“The ability to acquire and exchange data seamlessly among a wide array of EHR, EDC and CTMS platforms within a secure cloud-based environment and move them into shared data vaults where they can be used in real-time will support clinical research performance, quality, safety and oversight as never before,” said Greg Koski, ACRES co-founder and CEO. “Apollo provides the ability to achieve true connectivity among the many applications already in use, as well as new applications being developed, across the entire drug development and clinical trials endeavor, saving time and money for all, while creating innovative opportunities for creativity, efficiency and effectiveness.”
“This is a collaborative effort,” added ACRES COO Matt Whalen. “Rather than create a proprietary platform, ACRES is deploying a robust integration platform that can connect all stakeholders, whatever applications they currently use, in a timely and cost-effective manner. The power of this approach lies in what can be done through the application of soft systems engineering and the use of standards developed by organizations like OASIS, ICE, CDISC, GS1 and SAFE Biopharma.”
The Apollo platform also incorporates an “app store” to take advantage of the several technologies and point solution capabilities available to users, working in parallel with second-level integrations of EHR, EDC, CTMS and data management systems. A live demonstration of the Apollo’s robust systems capabilities for multiple high-value use-cases is planned in the second quarter of 2016. Additional applications from diverse providers are welcome.
The Alliance for Clinical Research Excellence and Safety (ACRES) today announced the launch of ACRES BlueCloud™, the first phase implementation of a shared multi-user interface to allow sponsors, CROs, regulatory agencies, funding agencies and IRBs to access millions of verifiable professional experience and training credentials, enabling long-sought sharing and mutual recognition of those credentials by multiple stakeholders.
The technology also provides a global integration platform through which stakeholders can seamlessly access and deploy already established technology solutions and collaborative data warehouses to support a global system for high-performance Accountable Research™.
Made possible by a multi-million dollar technologies and services pledge from ACRES’ strategic ally HealthCarePoint, a Texas-based healthcare and clinical research networking-technology corporation, ACRES BlueCloud™ provides much needed and desired capabilities for effortlessly interconnecting parties across the global clinical research ecosystem.
“We are happy to provide ACRES BlueCloud™ as part of our common mission to improve efficiency, quality and transparency across this endeavor, benefiting patients and care givers worldwide”, stated Al O. Pacino, president of HCP, “By donating this technology, we can very substantially help ACRES realize its goal to build a collaborative global system for clinical research.” Pacino is also ACRES’ Vice-President for Collaborative Network Development.
HealthCarePoint is among several technology companies and standards organizations comprising ACRES’ global Technology Consortium, working to integrate critical technology solutions from multiple providers into a comprehensive shared, universal interface supporting collaboration and interoperability among key stakeholders across the clinical research enterprise.
“There is much talk these days about portals and technology solutions to promote safety, quality, efficiency and collaboration in clinical research”, noted Greg Koski, ACRES president and CEO. “Actually, many solutions are already available and proven, but we need a system enabling them to work together. Rather than costly building from scratch, ACRES is leveraging existing technologies through a shared integration platform. ACRES Blue Cloud™ is a major first-step in this direction and we are very grateful to HealthCarePoint for making it possible.”
Rollout of the ACRES Blue Cloud™ platform will begin immediately by providing the technology free of charge to clinical research sites worldwide, thereby extending and leveraging the existing global network of nearly three-quarter million current BlueCloud™ users from some 60,000 healthcare and research-related organizations worldwide. The network’s single sign-on interface will allow sites to connect with sponsors, CROs, ethics committees (IRBs) and other stakeholders through a unified platform, sharing critical professional and operational information, such as GCP training certifications and other professional credentials. As other provider technologies integrate with the shared platform through application programming interfaces, commonly known as APIs, additional functionality will be added.
Daniel O’Connor, president and chief business officer of California-based InnovoCommerce, a leading provider of secure cloud-based collaboration solutions for the life science industry, enthusiastically greeted the announcement. “This is a milestone for the drug development enterprise. Global availability of a common platform allowing all players to connect and share information, which also enables access to and interoperability of technologies from multiple providers and users, is huge. ACRES vision of a shared integrating platform, as opposed to a single proprietary platform, is the foundation for a much needed global system, one that is taking shape before our eyes—this is real progress, and all of us at InnovoCommerce are proud to be part of it.”
