Your child means the world to you and your heart melts out when you see the little one suffering from any disease or illness. As a responsible parent, the next thing that you do is rush your kid to the best doctor and purchase the medicines prescribed by him from the nearest pharmacy or drugstore. So, now that you have made your kid pop in those medicines that you have bought, you are at ease that your kid would heal-up soon. But what if things turn out the other way around? What if the child develops some side effects or complications rather than healing up or in the extreme case die as the drugs you purchased were fake. Now, that’s the brutal reality of the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry.
According to the World Health Organization, counterfeit pharmaceuticals are worth $75 billion annually. While the global pharmaceutical industry spends huge amount of funds and resources in regulations, legislation and other anti-counterfeiting technologies such as RFID based sensors, there remains the need for a technology that can aptly deal with the pressing issue of drug counterfeiting, which have resulted in the introduction of fake drugs in the drug supply chain ecosystem.
One such technology that can now be utilized for combating drug counterfeiting and fake medications across the world is ‘Blockchain’. In fact, Blockchain technology ensures integrity of drug supply chain by tracking the journey of a drug right from manufacturing, delivery to its eventual consumption by the end-consumers. Blockchain-based track-and-trace serialization system backed by iOT comprehensively documents each step of a products’ journey from production to purchase.
By verifying data gathered from every participant in the supply chain that too in a secure and tamper-proof environment, pharmacist will get an opportunity to provide better patient safety by authenticating provenance of drug, ensuring proper management of inventory through better record keeping and control while facilitating an organized process for drug recalling. Apart from this, the smart contract functionality of this technology ensures the much-required transparency among multiple participants of the supply chain. In a nutshell, Blockchain will fill up all the gaps that encourage the propagation of counterfeit drugs by fake drug merchants.
By providing greater transparency and cognizance regarding the provenance of a drug, consumers will become more mindful about their buying power and its impact globally. With a robust blockchain-based system in place, drug manufacturers will be encouraged to indulge in fair and ethical business practices while saving several innocent lives in the process