Hyperledger project explores blockchain to combat counterfeit drugs

Rage Comment : At the Hyperledger blockchain project working group meeting, a representative of Accenture, a global professional services company, revealed that they are launching a project to combat counterfeit drugs using blockchain. Last year, the counterfeit drug situation in the UK and around the world was serious. Primrose Mbanefo, head of device interconnection software at Accenture, believes that blockchain distributed ledgers can effectively combat this illegal activity and help control product quality from the supply chain.

Translation: Annie_Xu

At a meeting of the Hyperledger blockchain project working group, a representative from Accenture, a global professional services company, pointed out that a project to combat counterfeit drugs using blockchain has just begun.

Specific project details are discussed at the subject group meetings required by the project.

Primrose Mbanefo, director of connected device software at Accenture, who leads the IoT development group and helped build part of the company’s proof of concept, said efficient tracking of medications with immutable data could improve the reliability of the pharmaceutical industry.

"If we get this data and prove that the documents have not been tampered with, we can say that the drugs came from the factory we say they came from."

The main controversy at the meeting was over the definition of counterfeiting in the pharmaceutical industry; Mbanefo said counterfeiters ranged from unscrupulous manufacturers to global conglomerates that fail to add the correct amount of active ingredients to a drug, or none at all.

“If there’s a supply chain that you can trust, you can figure it out.”

Given the commercial success of distributed timestamps, the leading idea in the pharmaceutical market is to use them to identify counterfeit and substandard drugs.

In June last year, Mbanefo was in the UK, where there was a surge in counterfeit drugs, with 6.2 million doses of fake medicines or medical devices worth a total of £15.8 million. According to the BBC, in that counterfeit drug crackdown, counterfeit and substandard medical supplies worth £51.6 million were seized worldwide.

Controlling the problem of counterfeit drugs is just one of many supply chain use cases that Hyperledger project members are focusing on.

Potential applications of blockchain in the supply chain include tracking the manufacture and assembly of computer components, assessing the quality of dairy products and confirming the authenticity of food labels.