The pharmaceutical supply chain is at the heart of a $1.27 trillion industry. Yet, due to its inherent sophistication and fragmentation, it is difficult to manage, regulate and protect, making it an attractive target for the production of counterfeit medicines and infiltration into the global supply chain.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately one in ten medical products in circulation in low- and middle-income countries is either substandard or falsified. Counterfeit medicines, lacking essential active ingredients, can cause serious harm to patients, lack of confidence in healthcare systems and, in the worst cases, death.
Detecting and preventing counterfeit medicines is challenging, mainly due to the lack of a standardized system to track the movement of medicines and the need for stakeholder awareness.
With its decentralized, transparent, controlled and secure approach, blockchain is emerging as a potential solution. Its fundamental principle of non-repetition and object symmetry makes it an effective tool for tracking and verifying the authenticity of medicines throughout the supply chain.
However, despite its effectiveness and the counterfeit drug market estimated at over $200 billion, blockchain technology has yet to be fully implemented in the pharmaceutical supply chain, according to a 2023 study of blockchain technology .
Living up to post-Covid expectations
According to a 2020 Harvard Business Review According to this analysis, blockchain can revolutionize supply chain management by improving product traceability and strengthening coordination between partners. Technology can solve pharmaceutical supply chain problems by providing timely data and increasing the authenticity, integrity and invariability of shared data, confirms a 2023 study by Swedish researchers.
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for greater data transparency, better technology deployment and improved ways to connect information throughout the supply chain. Manufacturers can prevent counterfeit medicines by using blockchain technology for drug provenance verification systems, serialization, and clinical trial data management.
A 2023 study explored how blockchain can support pharmaceutical supply chains, particularly in emerging country contexts like Egypt. Researchers have found that adopting new technologies is crucial to improving supply chain activities and processes in today’s complex and dynamic business environment. By reducing contracting costs, processing costs and delivery times, blockchain has a positive impact on transaction costs and ensures the safe delivery of medicines.
However, lack of transparency, distrust of collaboration, and unwillingness to share data may pose significant challenges to this global industry, as reported in another 2023 study. The global pharmaceutical industry has also experienced a 69% decrease in the number of companies mentioning blockchain in Q4 2023 compared to the previous quarter, according to GlobalData.
GlobalData is the parent company of Pharmaceutical technology.
Ensuring standardization is one of the biggest hurdles, as all parties must agree on a common set of standards and protocols to track the movement of medicines for the system to work effectively. Additionally, regulatory and legal hurdles must be overcome before implementing the system.
Blockchain technology innovation
Several technology companies, including Novo Nordisk, Blockpharma and SoluLab, have touted their blockchain capabilities for the pharmaceutical sector. In particular, IBM said it can “ensure transparency and foster trust” using blockchain for the global pharmaceutical supply chain.
Boehringer Ingelheim and IBM have partnered, allowing Boehringer to use IBM’s core template technologies to discover new antibodies for the development of effective treatments. The company will use a pre-trained AI model developed by IBM, which will then be refined on additional proprietary data from Boehringer. The duo’s collaboration is the latest in IBM’s efforts to use generative AI and core models to accelerate the discovery and creation of new biologics and small molecules.
“A key distinguishing feature of these generative AI and core model technologies is the rich representations of these models that can capture the myriad nuances of the structure and dynamics of molecular interactions,” Jianying Hu, PhD, IBM Fellow, Director, HCLS Research Global Science. Leader, AI for Healthcare, Says IBM Research Pharmaceutical technology on the drivers of IBM’s collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim.
Generative AI and core models for therapeutic antibody development achieve these capabilities through pre-training through self-supervised learning on large amounts of multimodal data, including drug molecules, proteins, interactions, single-cell RNA sequences, and other biological data.
The technology is currently still in an exploratory phase. “These models need to be validated and improved through iterative rounds of web lab validations, and their values ultimately need to be proven through clinical trials before achieving large-scale use and impact in industry,” says Hu .
“The use of generative AI and base models for counterfeit drug detection has not yet been explored,” says Hu, and indicates that this is outside the scope of IBM’s collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim.
Those who have adopted blockchain technologies have recognized their inherent characteristics, such as transparency, immutability and decentralization. Blockchain is also compatible with other technologies, such as radio frequency identification (RFID) and barcodes, and is accessible in real time throughout the supply chain.
The MediLedger project uses blockchain technology to combat counterfeit medicines. The project uses blockchain to track and trace prescription drugs throughout supply chains and provide transaction-related data such as contracts, customers and products, designed to ensure automation, authenticity and confidence at the industry level.
Another company, Cypheme, has developed an anti-counterfeiting system aimed at reducing the number of fake medicines sold. Thanks to its anti-counterfeiting technology, by using a smartphone and scanning the application, the Cypheme system can spot a counterfeit product, geolocate it, put it on a map and trigger an alarm.
Manufacturers can gain greater visibility into the movement of their products using blockchain, which can help prevent the distribution of counterfeit medicines. Distributors and pharmacists can easily verify the authenticity of medications and ensure they meet quality standards. Additionally, patients may benefit from increased confidence in the medications they receive, which may improve their overall health.
“Blockchain leaders finesse tech to find fake drugs” was originally created and published by Pharmaceutical Technology, a brand owned by GlobalData.
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