Biodata Compensation: An Ethical Responsibility

The global big data market had a revenue of $162.6 billion in 2021.1 Data is becoming more valuable to companies than gold. However, this data has been used, historically, without contributors’ informed consent and without them seeing a penny from the discoveries the data led to. This article discusses how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can provide a helpful tool for pharmaceutical companies to track contributed data and compensate contributors accordingly. NFTs are unique, untradable cryptographic assets that can be tracked on a blockchain. NFTs provide a unique traceable token that cannot be replicated, providing a perfect tool to store biodata. The term biodata refers to details regarding a patient’s history and behavioral patterns.