We blindly buy medicines from pharmacies or get them at a hospital with a doctor's prescription.
But do you check your medicines?
Some of us check the expiry date. While others at most check if the medicine is the right one as written on the prescription or not.
Have you ever thought that the medicine you are taking might be a fake drug?
This takes us to the next question.
Is there a way to check the authenticity of the medicines?
The traditional pharmaceutical supply chain does not offer that level of transparency and tracking. Currently, with the conventional supply chain, you cannot verify the origin, authenticity, and journey of the drugs.
So, what is the solution?
Blockchain with its decentralization and immutability features offers an ideal solution to prevent drug counterfeiting. Moreover, it can efficiently track drug origin, transport and procurement of raw materials.
That’s not all!
Blockchain technology in healthcare with the help of digital tokens and smart contracts can record all crucial drug and transportation data ensuring the quality of the drugs is maintained in the supply chain.
In this blog, we will analyse how blockchain supply chain solutions can benefit the pharmaceutical industry.
Challenges in the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain
Counterfeiting has become a common problem in most industries. However, when we talk about counterfeiting and supply chain failures in pharmaceuticals, the consequences are adverse.
Counterfeit expired or low-quality drugs can:
● Degrade the quality of care
● Lead to health complications
● Inefficient to cure disease
● Might even lead to death
These consequences are the result of loopholes in the existing supply chain.
Here are some of the common challenges in the pharma supply chain.
Lack of Transparency: Tracking the Product's Journey
The traditional medical supply chain is vague. You have no means to verify and check the origin, journey or data of the drugs.
This lack of transparency raises serious concerns about the quality of the drugs and their impact on our health.
Dealing with Counterfeit Drugs: Ensuring Patient Safety
Counterfeit drugs pose a significant challenge in the pharmaceutical industry.
These fake or substandard medicines can harm patients in several ways. It can interfere with the treatment, delay the process and even create more complexities.
WHO reports indicate that an estimated one in ten medical products in developing countries are falsified or fail to meet standards.
For instance, in Egypt 10% of the total drugs sold are counterfeit.
This not only has tragic consequences for patients but also poses a threat to antimicrobial resistance, making medicines less effective over time.
Further, counterfeit drugs result in 100,000 to 1,000,000 deaths annually.
Managing Cold Chain Losses: Ensuring Product Efficacy
Counterfeiting is not the only problem in the medical supply chain.
Several drugs require specific transportation and storage facilities to maintain their quality. Some drugs need strict temperature control during transportation and storage.
In several cases, these factors about the drugs are ignored. As a result, the chemicals in the drugs react and lose their efficiency.
This results in expired and ineffective drugs which can be harmful for the patients. Sometimes these drugs are recalled which leads to financial losses.
According to IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, the biopharma industry loses approximately $35 billion annually due to supply chain temperature control failures.
Implementing better cold chain management protocols can help minimize these losses.
Enhancing Cybersecurity: Safeguarding Sensitive Data
The fragmented supply chain involving research arms, facilities, and distribution partners worldwide exposes the pharmaceutical industry to cybersecurity risks.
Cyberattacks can compromise sensitive data, disrupt operations, and undermine product integrity.
As seen in the Merck cyberattack in 2017, such incidents can result in substantial financial losses.
Strengthening your cybersecurity measures is crucial to protect against potential threats and maintain your operations' integrity.
The above reasons are enough for us to start finding a robust solution to this problem.
NFTtrace is one such blockchain supply chain use case that harnesses the power of tokenisation for credential verification, provenance tracking and data protection across the healthcare supply chain.
How Can Blockchain Supply Chain Solutions Benefit Pharma Industry?
Medicine Tracking
Blockchain supply chain solutions create a single shared ledger for the manufacturers, suppliers, distributors and pharmacists to track every movement of the drugs.
Moreover, the distributed ledger also enables parties in the supply chain to verify and process payments and transactions.
Even you can also drug journey and access related data with blockchain. Companies using blockchain in the medical supply chain put smart tags on their products.
You can scan these smart labels to verify all the information about the drug, including its origin, batch number, expiry date, and temperature control.
High Security
Blockchain stores all the data in blocks which contain cryptographically calculated hash. Any changes in the data of the blocks alter the hash which then mismatches with other blocks.
This makes the data in the blocks immutable. It means that no one can change the data once it's recorded on the blockchain.
When you apply this to the pharma supply chain, it proves as the most useful feature.
As the drug moves along the supply chain, its data is recorded on the blockchain. Once the data is recorded on the blockchain no one can go back and change it.
Therefore, no one can change the information about the drug like its batch number, origin, manufacturer details, supplier details and other info.
So, this restricts access to unauthorized parties and illegal activities in the medical supply chain.
In short, no one can disrupt the supply chain and replace the original drugs with counterfeit ones.
Further, the blockchain supply chain also prevents cyberattacks and safeguards confidential drug data.
Prevents Counterfeiting
Blockchain tracking records every movement of the drug and records all the data about its raw materials, composition to manufacturing and distribution.
Therefore, anyone from manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacists to consumers, can access the entire journey of the drugs.
This prevents fake drugs from entering the market as people can easily differentiate between fake and original drugs.
Secure Transactions
Blockchain supply chain in healthcare also enables its participants to process transactions securely and transparently.
All the transactions at every step of the supply chain are recorded on the blockchain. So, no one can forge the payments.
Being recorded on a single shared ledger, involved parties in the supply chain can verify the transactions and their details.
Thus, it establishes trust among parties and reduces conflicts.
Temperature Control Shipping
By employing Blockchain, temperature data can be traced, guaranteeing that storage conditions remain uncompromised.
These innovative healthcare solutions based on Blockchain promptly alert operators about any temperature control inefficiencies, enabling timely interventions to safeguard the vaccine supply.
How Blockchain Pharma Supply Chain Solutions Work?
Let us now understand how blockchain supply chain solutions in pharma work.
Step 1
The manufacturer produces the drug and attaches a smart tag to it.
The smart tag contains the following data:
● Batch number
● Origin
● Expiry date
● Item name
● Manufacturing date
● Specific temperature control transportation details
The tag may contain more information depending on the drug variety.
This information is then stored on the blockchain. Once it's processed on the blockchain, it generates a hash ID. It's similar to a tracking ID.
Using these hash ID parties in the supply chain can track the drug.
The drugs are then shipped to the distributors in IoT enables devices. These devices also have temperature sensors that track every little change in temperature during the transport process.
If the temperature deviates from the permissible limits, the device alerts the concerned parties. moreover, these devices also record the time and location of the drug shipment. So, the stakeholders and government can easily track the progress of the drug shipment.
Step – 2
The distributors receive the drugs and then use the hash ID to check the drugs.
Now the distributors can easily verify the origin of the drugs. They can check if the drugs sent to them are the same ones from their manufacturer or different.
Once the drugs pass the quality checks, the distributors sign the transaction digitally.
This digital signature is added to the blockchain. The smart contract on the blockchain triggers the system to process drug transportation to hospitals and pharmacies.
Step – 3
The pharmacies and hospitals receive the drugs. Now they can verify the originality and quality of the drugs using the hash ID.
For instance, if a distributor tries to sell fake drugs with fake IDs, the pharmacies can easily track them down. When the pharmacist enters the fake ID on the blockchain, it will come out as invalid.
Moreover, data on the blockchain is immutable. So, the distributor could not hack into the system and alter the original data.
Also, any other third party cannot disrupt the supply chain and push counterfeit products. It is because you need a valid private key to sign the transaction on the blockchain.
Therefore, pharmacists will easily find out anomalies in case of any illegal activity in the supply chain.
Once the pharmacy verifies the drugs, they sign off the transaction which is also recorded on the blockchain.
Step 4
Now suppose you have to buy some medicines.
You can go to the pharmacy and get the medicine as usual. However, unlike before, now you can verify your medicine.
You can scan the smart tag on the medicine. It will give you access to its origin, manufacturing details, expiry date, shipment details and more.
Therefore, you can ensure that you are not taking counterfeit drugs.
The entire blockchain medical supply chain process is transparent and decentralized. It is consensus-driven, thus, no central authority has control over the data or the blockchain.
A decentralized medical supply chain will also enable government and regulatory bodies to keep strict surveillance.
Conclusion
Blockchain technology in the pharma supply chain transforms the entire infrastructure bringing more transparency, efficiency, trust and security. It establishes a decentralized medical supply chain system that prevents low standard and fake drugs from entering the market.
The blockchain supply chain is a ray of hope towards better care facilities by overcoming the challenges in the pharmaceutical industry.
Chaincode Consulting, a leading blockchain development company holds the key to build efficient blockchain-based medical supply chain software for your business. With extensive technical know-how in implementing blockchain in the healthcare supply chain, we excel in crafting secure and scalable solutions.
Our approach involves a meticulous analysis of your requirements, gaining a deep understanding of your specific business needs, and creating customized software solutions with strict adherence to HIPAA compliance.
Book a call with our experts today!
