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. 2025 Apr;25(4):96-111.
doi: 10.1080/15265161.2024.2416117. Epub 2024 Nov 5.

Enabling Demonstrated Consent for Biobanking with Blockchain and Generative AI

Caspar Barnes  1   2 , Mateo Riobo Aboy  3   4 , Timo Minssen  5 , Jemima Winifred Allen  6   7 , Brian D Earp  7   8 , Julian Savulescu  7   8 , Sebastian Porsdam Mann  5   7   8
Affiliations

Enabling Demonstrated Consent for Biobanking with Blockchain and Generative AI

Caspar Barnes et al. Am J Bioeth. 2025 Apr.

Abstract

Participation in research is supposed to be voluntary and informed. Yet it is difficult to ensure people are adequately informed about the potential uses of their biological materials when they donate samples for future research. We propose a novel consent framework which we call "demonstrated consent" that leverages blockchain technology and generative AI to address this problem. In a demonstrated consent model, each donated sample is associated with a unique non-fungible token (NFT) on a blockchain, which records in its metadata information about the planned and past uses of the sample in research, and is updated with each use of the sample. This information is accessible to a large language model (LLM) customized to present this information in an understandable and interactive manner. Thus, our model uses blockchain and generative AI technologies to track, make available, and explain information regarding planned and past uses of donated samples.

Keywords: Informed consent; biomedical research; blockchain; generative AI; large language models (LLMs); research ethics.

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Conflict of interest statement

CB is founder and CEO of AminoChain inc, a company providing blockchain-based decentralized biobanking products. SPM and JS are advisors of AminoChain, Inc. SPM is also an ethics advisor for Retroviral Therapeutics LLC. JS is a Partner Investigator on an Australian Research Council grant LP190100841 which involves industry partnership from Illumina. He does not personally receive any funds from Illumina. JS is a Bioethics Committee consultant for Bayer. No other authors report relevant disclosures.

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