While web3 is under development and blockchain technologies are flourishing building the foundations for that decentralized and privacy-preserving web, the timing is perfect to discuss how a genomics lab should look like in a blockchain space.
Decentralization first, please: while a physical space is still needed, it does not mean everything should happen in only one place. Imagine a scenario where many people in several countries are looking to sequence (i) pathogens genomes to identify which strains are circulating then detect and track new strains, or (ii) the genomes of endangered species in the context of an open network effort. Let's say many small laboratories already have a portable, easy to use and cheap sequencer, meaning they already have the capacity to mitigate the high demand for sequencing services. In a decentralized space, all those small labs should be whitelisted in a blockchain smart-contract being able to accept the service request then receive the samples and sequence them promptly. In order to be whitelisted, sequencing labs should meet gold-standard good practices and quality control. Of course, payment authorization for reagent suppliers, DNA extraction and sequencing itself would be programmed in the same smart-contract requesting the service. Some payments (e.g. reagents and 50% advance for the sequencing service) could be executed upon service request acceptance, and the remaining executed once the service has been completed, exactly as programmed in the smart-contract.
Additional smart-contracts would be programmed to (i) track reagents supply chain for the genomics lab, (ii) track best prices of high quality products on the market, (iii) execute a purchase order when the amount of reagents is low and at the best price available and finally (iv) log protocols, best practices and operational data in a privacy-preserving blockchain.
Obtained sequencing raw-data should be encrypted and another smart-contract used to request bioinformatics analysis services. An army of bioinformatics experts would be available and many of them would be whitelisted to offer those services. Final results (e.g. SNPs, CNVs, trait association, etc) should be available using a privacy-preserving blockchain network and transferred directly to the customer’s digital wallet.
Privacy above all: NDA’s should be smart contracts among interested parties, and Intellectual Property (IP) too. Royalties and rewards should be properly programmed in the smart contracts to retribute creators, venture capitalists and all third parties efforts involved in the development and production process. Labs communication (chat/messaging) should be also happen using dApps (decentralized applications) and decentralized services on the blockchain. Clinical samples may contain host (e.g. human) DNA, so when using a shotgun sequencing approach the host DNA data can be part of the results. Every effort should be made to keep a person's DNA data private. In a privacy-preserving blockchain space, users data are owned by users themselves, then they can (i) keep it private, (ii) share it with physicians (ideally, personalized medicine will have adopted blockchain technologies and medical records will be fully tokenized, so physicians would have temporary access to patients sensitive data in their digital wallets), (iii) monetize it or (iv) just delete it.
Just now not every blockchain network can offer privacy-preserving features by design yet. Also, a few Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are raising to fill the decentralization gap in the biotech space, unfortunately (and as far as I know) none in South America yet, so we will see much more amazing developments in the near future.