What’s in the Box? Combating Counterfeit Medications in Pharmaceutical Supply chains with Blockchain Vigilant Information Systems

Trust is a cornerstone of the pharmaceutical industry in terms of ensuring the integrity of all medications that are circulated in the supply chain. This trust is now of even more paramount importance during these COVID-19 challenging times. Pharmaceutical supply chain stakeholders such as pharmacists and patients must have trust in the medications that are being dispensed and consumed. However, the scale and increasing trend of global falsified medicinal products is worrying both from financial and humanitarian perspectives.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) 10% of medical products around the world are falsified (WHO, 2017). Furthermore, the counterfeit medications have cost the global economy $250 billion-per-year (OECD, 2019) and has resulted in the deaths of 250,000 children a year (Sample, 2019). All the aforementioned are compounded by the emergence of fake online pharmacies through which patients can order medications.

Additionally, the process of mass recalls of medications is time consuming, laborious, and costly. There is also another challenge in terms of opioid overprescribing which is one of the primary causes of opioid abuse. According to the organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) in the United States in 2015, there were 240 million opioid prescriptions (OECD, 2019). Similarly, in the United Kingdom, there were 23.8 million opioid-based prescriptions in 2017, an increase of 10 million prescriptions since 2007.

New research from the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) has explored how Blockchain, the technology underpinning the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, has been touted as a possible solution for the pharmaceutical industry to overcome the aforementioned concerns. Currently, IBM, KMPG, Walmart, and Merck in collaboration with the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) in the United States are piloting and evaluating blockchain technology’s ability to enhance food and pharmaceutical supply chain security. The FDA will trial a shared permissioned blockchain network built on cloud computing infrastructure to track the lifetime history data of all manufactured medications in real-time.

Lead-author Dr Trevor Clohessy, Department of Enterprise and Technology, GMIT School of Business, said; “Blockchain is a transparent and secure database shared either among a limited private group or available more publicly. Each participant owns an identical copy of the ledger. Companies traditionally use in-house centralised databases for record-keeping purposes. Blockchain uses distributed digital ledgers.

“We have developed a multi-layer pharmaceutical blockchain vigilant information system (PBVIS) model that outlines how a pharmaceutical stakeholder could detect counterfeit medications in real-time in dynamic supply chain environments using data stored on the blockchain, recall products faster, and also identify instances of opioid over-prescription. Ultimately, blockchain vigilant information systems will enable pharmaceutical companies and their supply chain partners to act faster in terms of decision making.”

Research Study Details

Research Title: What’s in the Box? Combating Counterfeit Medications in Pharmaceutical Supply Chains with Blockchain Vigilant Information Systems

Research Authors: Trevor Clohessy (GMIT)

Study Published in: Springer Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology Use Cases Applications and Lessons Learned

Study Link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-44337-5_3