Combating Counterfeit Drugs with Blockchain Applications

The blog details how a blockchain healthcare application mitigates counterfeit medicines. It explains how blockchain application development services provide solutions to the pharmaceutical industry to stop the influx of counterfeit drugs in distribution.

Blockchain, by its design, is immutable, reliable, and secure. Using this one form of distributed ledger design across the entire healthcare value chain, stakeholders can avoid several challenges and pitfalls.

Waging a War Against Counterfeit Drugs with a Blockchain Healthcare Application

Faulty supply chain management is one of the biggest challenges in any industry. Especially, the healthcare sector faces additional risk and complexity.

A compromised supply chain in healthcare means compromised safety of patients. Increased globalization, adoption of technology, and the involvement of multiple stakeholders complicate the health supply chain.

Global pharmaceutical sales estimate in the year 2015, USD 1.1 trillion; counterfeit drugs, 2.5 percent.

Blockchain in Pharma Supply Chain: Re-modeling the Process

Blockchain improves integrity, security, and data provenance of the supply chains with its attributes like transparency, immutability, and auditability.

Generally, these stakeholders have their involvement in the dispersal of drugs:

• Manufacturers

• Logistic Service Providers

• Distributors

• Hospitals/Pharmacies

• Patients

Integration of QR Codes and Blockchain

The process of combating counterfeit drugs embarks with, a manufacturer adding QR codes after mass-producing them. The code stores information like the medicines’ name, timestamp, the location of manufacturing, and the expiry date.

A blockchain healthcare application, for instance, developed on the Ethereum blockchain, allows its stakeholders to trace each transaction during the manufacturing of medicines using a Hash ID. It is a unique identifier, a long string of letters and numbers used to identify a specific transaction on the blockchain.

The amalgamation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and distributed ledger (Blockchain)

IoT-enabled vehicles with temperature sensors ship them to the distributors to allow cold-chain shipping.

It saves an enormous amount of time and efforts in auditing the storage conditions of temperature-sensitive drugs. Stakeholders can track anomalies by accessing data produced by the temperature sensors on the blockchain with a mobile or web app.

Dispersal of drugs to hospitals/pharmacies

Drug distributors check the provenance of medicines using the hash ID stored on the blockchain.

Distributors access all the information added by the manufacturers to verify the received drugs and sign the transactions digitally. It triggers smart contracts to enable the delivery of drugs to hospitals/pharmacies.

Collection and authentication of drugs by hospitals/pharmacies

Hospitals/pharmacies validate the authenticity of the received drugs.

Upon the approval of drugs by the pharmacist, blockchain stores the transactions and ensures a legal trade. Pharmacists use the hash ID to trace back the origin of the drugs, or any activity by the distributors to counterfeit drugs with a fake drug ID.

Authentication of drugs by patients using the QR code

Patients ensure whether the medication they are buying is safe or not via a mobile app.

Through the hash ID attached to the QR code patients can know everything from its source to quality standards.

Blockchain as a Solution

Blockchain developers can develop blockchain healthcare applications equipped with numerous advanced features using its technology stack

• Nullify the transactions if the drugs contain fraudulent information

• Prohibit access to unauthorized individuals in the drug supply chain

• Allow the ecosystem of healthcare stakeholders to track anomalies happened within the transactions immediately

• Enable monitoring of movements involved

Moving Towards Decentralization

Using blockchain healthcare applications, we can shift the governance model of the drug supply chain to the surveillance net (where every stakeholder can survey the actions in the supply chain in a transparent way).

Looking for a Blockchain Based Healthcare Applications for Pharma Supply Chain Management

Our blockchain experts develop such applications on a proprietary distributed ledger platform to enable end-to-end traceability of drugs. Clients looking to solve problems like thefts transparency, and recalls in the shipment of medicines can connect with us.

Healthcare blockchain solutions provided by the team of blockchain development experts at Oodles carry the potential to empower the entire drug supply chain. They equip it with tracing and traceability features of blockchain to transform the pharmaceutical supply chain.

We are a leading Blockchain Development Company providing end-to-end blockchain solutions for Smart Contracts, Wallets, Cryptocurrency Exchanges and Ico.