Gene therapy · HLTH 2022

Vein to vein, every handoff verified.

For the HLTH conference, we built a demo of a verifiable chain of custody for gene therapy: from apheresis, through storage and temperature, through the gene therapy lab, and back into the same patient as an infusion. Parts of it made it into Salesforce Health Cloud.

The demo kit on a table: a patient wristband with a QR code, a black reader with a glowing blood-drop panel, character badge cards, and a prop blood bag labeled AB positive
The kit: wristband, badges, reader, and a stand-in blood bag.

One patient, one chain of custody

Who handled it, when, and at what temperature.
Apheresis

The patient's cells are collected.

Storage and transport

Every move logged, temperature included.

Gene therapy lab

The cells are modified into the therapy.

Infusion

The therapy goes back into the same patient.

01Why the chain matters

The patient's own cells leave the body, and they have to come back.

In an autologous gene therapy, the medicine starts as the patient's own blood. It leaves the body, gets stored and shipped, is modified in a lab, and comes back for infusion. Every handoff is a chance to lose track of it, and a therapy made for one person can't go to anyone else. The chain of custody has to prove, at every step, whose cells these are, who handled them, and that they stayed at the right temperature.

02Apheresis

Every handoff is a tap.

We made the chain physical so people at HLTH could run it with their own hands. Scan the patient's wristband, tap a badge on the reader, set the bag down, and the custody record updates on the phone. The reader's glowing drop shows where the therapy is in its journey.

HLTH 2022Collection, with a demo patient.
03Infusion

Then it comes back to the same patient.

At infusion, the same wristband and the same bag close the loop. The phone and the reader move to the infusion stage, and the record shows the whole journey from collection to the bedside.

HLTH 2022Infusion, the loop closed on the same wristband.
What it proved

The demo was the argument. Health Cloud was the proof.

Parts of what we built for HLTH made it into Salesforce Health Cloud. That's how new products often start: someone builds the thing before it has a line on a roadmap, puts it in front of real people, and the parts that land become the product.

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