Blockchain technology is the digital ledger technology that is sweeping through a number of industries on a wave of hype. Could the tech’s inherent transparency, security and reliability have applications in the pharmaceutical space? The answer seems to be an emphatic yes, but how could this underpinning technology improve the pharmaceutical supply chain?
Blockchain is rapidly becoming the industry buzzword of the moment, with industries ranging from financial services to energy suppliers seeking to capitalise on this digital technology. At its core, blockchain software is a digital ledger system used to record and log transactions (financial or otherwise), grouping them into chronologically-ordered ‘blocks’.
A simple enough premise, but it’s the associated advantages that come with a blockchain that make it such an attractive proposition. The database is distributed across a network of computers, leaving no centralised entry point that could be targeted by hackers. The system is also completely transparent, with all users able to see transactions and changes to public blockchains, and once data is entered into a block on the chain, it is inherently resistant to modification as any change would require a brute-force attack on the whole chain.
Blockchain: moving into healthcare
Blockchain technology is the underpinning technology for crypto-currencies such as bitcoin, and therefore many in the healthcare sector may have primarily heard of it in connection with the various large-scale ransomware attacks – which generally demand payment in the form of crypto-currency – that have hit public health systems in recent years.
Despite the possible negative connotations surrounding blockchain and crypto-currencies, the potential for the blockchain to bring tangible benefits to the healthcare sector is incredibly high. At the MedCity Converge conference in Philadelphia, US last year, Merck associate director for applied technology, Nishan Kulatilaka, noted that healthcare could be the second-largest sector to adopt the technology, after financial services.
For patients and public health systems, blockchain could, among other applications, be a natural facilitator for electronic health records that are shareable between different health organisations without impairing the security of the data.
Supply chain integrity: the first pharma target for blockchain
While there are a number of intuitive applications for blockchain technology in public healthcare, what about the pharmaceutical sector that is responsible for developing, manufacturing and distributing the medicines that are used in these settings every day?
A number of possibilities are already being considered in the industry, but one facet of the pharma landscape is particularly ripe for improvement: the drug supply chain. The issue of counterfeit medicines has become increasingly pressing, both in terms of the economic cost of this global black market and the risk to human life that comes from taking counterfeit drugs that may not have the same active pharmaceutical ingredients or dosage levels as the real thing.
Although tracking the full extent of the counterfeit drugs trade is difficult, the World Health Organization pegged global fake drug sales at $75bn in 2010, a 90% increase over five years. In many developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America, counterfeit drugs comprise between 10% and 30% of the total medicines on sale. Despite major international investigations and massive seizures – a single Interpol operation (Pangea VIII) in the summer of 2015 seized $81m worth of counterfeit medicines, arrested more than 150 people and removed nearly 2,500 fraudulent websites from the internet – it’s extremely challenging to keep up with a decentralised shadow industry that moves fast.
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