Pilot 1B: Pharmaceuticals

Every year, consumers in the Southeast Asia Region spend an estimated US$520 million to US$2.6 billion on falsified medicines. The drug forgeries in the region can be addressed and supported by blockchain technology as all transactions on the distributed ledger are immutable and digitally stamped. In the case of Covid vaccines manufactured from China, the process is to engage local counterparts to “fill and finish” (essentially rebottling into ready-to-use vials) for onward distribution and last-mile delivery. Our blockchain solution is integrated with Internet-of-Things (IoT) capabilities for real-time heat and location tracking by GPS.

As multiple parties are involved in the supply chain, applying identifiers with barcodes to the product and packaging will ensure the authenticity of the drugs. Scanning barcodes will be necessary at each touchpoint and making all of the information available to the manufacturer or the regulator to ensure it is tamper-proof and fraudsters cannot insert counterfeit medicine into the tagged packaging.

“Track and trace,” the process of identifying where a specific box of drugs is and where it has been, at any time. With blockchain technology, this process can be done without revealing confidential business intelligence to anyone in the ecosystem. The infrastructure of the accessibility of the data collected will be different and limited to various parties. For instance, pharmacies or hospitals can simply use a barcode scanner to verify the authenticity of a particular drug via a product verification system. From what would normally take up to 48 hours, can now be done in just a few seconds by just scanning the barcode to verify the authenticity of drugs before it is placed on the shelf. Counterfeiters could still copy barcodes in an attempt to pass drugs off as legitimate — but the ledger will flag and permanently record suspicious activity.

Ultimately, companies on Zetrix will be able to enforce business rules in real-time as a box of drugs travels from one handoff point to another across an entire supply chain, even in the outer recesses of an ecosystem, far beyond a manufacturer or distributor’s control. Along the way, auditing is automated and embedded, flagging problems and who has custody as it happens. When drugs reach their final destination, it’s as if they arrive with a black box of data to assure authenticity and compliance with business rules during their entire journey.

The massive demographic size of ASEAN, third largest in the world after China and India, with nearly 680 million in population, makes the distribution of vaccines and controlled medicines in general a highly compelling business case. It can offer as quickly and efficiently locating issues, hold-ups and bottlenecks and removing the risk of double counting through instantaneous transactions and the use of a consensus mechanism. Time-sensitive and large number of drugs and the significant impact on people’s lives if the drugs are faulty or counterfeit, blockchain technology offers a reliable end-to-end tracking and monitoring of vaccines and drugs through the supply chain.