Introduction
Pharmaceutical Supply Chain is one of the most complex ones in the world, while being the most porous one too. On one end genuine manufacturers spend billions to make sure that their medicines in the recommended storage mode (cold storage or recommended temperature) is transported to the end customer and on the other end a counterfeit manufacturer can copy the package of the genuine ones and make it available to the same customer. The issue here is that the customer is incapable of finding the difference. By the time the difference does come out, a life or many lives would have been lost. Welcome to the World of Counterfeiting!
The Problem
In 2009, the Government of Nigeria came up with a report stating that China was selling counterfeit drugs and stamped the consignment as “Made in India”. Needless to say, it set out finger-pointing between the two countries and brought forth many possibilities of what could have happened. Here were some of the possible outcomes:
- The Chinese were indeed guilty and were the ones selling counterfeit drugs
- The Indians got it wrong and were responsible for the counterfeit
- Neither Indians not Chinese were guilty. In fact, since they were one of the largest exporters of generic drugs, a vested third country had planted the situation to cause distrust and enmity between the two countries
Well, as you can see, three different possibilities existed but none could be proved because there were no underlying system linking the drug from the manufacturer to the logistics service provider to the shipper (shipped through sea) and finally to the consignee, Nigeria in this case. No solution could, therefore be worked out in the wake of not knowing where the problem was.
What happened then?
While the countries tried to figure out the solution, as much as the manufacturer in that country, this is what would have happened:
- People lost their lives to counterfeit drugs. Single most important aspect to be tackled in the first place
- Reputation of the country took a hit. Not only China, the accused in this case, but also India because there was no guarantee a consignment labelled as Made in India would be genuine
- Reputation of the manufacturer took a hit
- Governments had to launch actions to counter the claims, so as to not impact other client countries
- Logistics and Supply Chain had to be re-looked to make genuine drug movement air-tight
If we look at all the above points, we would realize that we are talking about huge costs involved, maybe in billions of dollars, while the irreparable aspect of loss of human life. This is just one example.
Let’s look at how immense the problem was and continues to be. Since we started with an issue India as a country faced, let’s take a manufacturer from the same country as an example. Look at Figure 1.
Figure 1
Deep Diving into the problem
Now the manufacturer has to make sure supply of Drug 1 (Let’s take one drug for example) through his domestic supply chain for his domestic customers, international supply chain, statutory reporting at the country of manufacturing, regulatory reporting at the country of origin and client country. Now, this is just for one drug with multiple iterations at many points and duplication of information at each point (as the information is required in different format by different receivers) and lastly no interface being available between the different cogs in the wheel. The transporter’s system is not interfaced with manufacturer, or the pharmacy/hospital’s system not interfaced with transporter, and the end consumer buying from the hospital or pharmacy having no interface with the hospital, pharmacy or the manufacturer. At this point, we are not even touching the documentation part. And just to remind you all, this is just for one drug.
Now multiply these issues with 10 or even 100 drugs from the manufacturer and multiply that number with the number of pharmaceutical manufacturers in India. Now, we see how big the problem is for tracking? And we have still not spoken about other countries. How’s that for immense? So we have established that inefficiencies exist in the whole system (duplication, etc.) and therefore, high cost of managing the supply chain.
Oh but wait, this is not over yet. We have discussed only physical distribution so far, but there is something called as virtual or online distribution as well. Reaching the end consumer through online distribution is not limited to genuine distributors. Anyone who can reach the consumer through mail, digital marketing, etc. can very well sell the medicine without having to prove his authentic distribution credentials; another dimension to the problem. So, how do we manage that?
When we put the physical world and virtual world problem together, the question that arises is how can anyone possibly track end-to-end and make it more efficient?
And the more important question – does anyone have a solution to find counterfeit drugs in this immense flow of information and material? Turns out someone does.
Solution
At the beginning of this article, we mentioned that for a long time there was no underlying technology to tie up all the touch points together, thereby making it difficult to link one with the other.
But as of today, we know of one technology which can come to play here – blockchain – and FarmaTrust does exactly that, brings forth a solution using blockchain to solve issues in pharmaceutical supply chain.
To resolve the issues that we discussed under the deep dive section, we needed a tool or solution which should have the following attributes:
- Decentralized yet one version of truth
- Immutable Ledger
- Scalability
- Transparent and visible to all touch points
- Extremely secure
Until FarmaTrust came along with their solution, no tool could be envisaged to handle the above mentioned points effectively. But now with FarmaTrust, the real world solution is as simple as creating an app for end consumer, like you and me, to track if the medicine is genuine or not – all on FarmaTrust’s blockchain platform.
At each interaction point FarmaTrust API creates a blockchain transaction enabling the end-user to trace the packet right back to the manufacturer. A pictorial representation of such an ecosystem is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Superimposing AI and Data Analytics on the blockchain enables learning and improvement, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing cost. The Analytics engine can even deal with Regulatory and Statutory bodies and automate reporting allowing Pharma companies to focus on their core of producing the right drug at the right cost.
In addition to the obvious benefit of getting genuine drug to the consumer, the following secondary benefits also add-on:
- Removal of middle-men in distribution
- Reduce time to Hospitals and Pharmacy
- Visibility of the consumption at each level and therefore, start the batch production instead of waiting for the orders to come in
- Better scheduling as the consumption report shows ailments seen in regions and geographies and what drugs need to be produced in higher or lower quantities
- Logistics Service Providers can plan shipment basis manufacturing time-to-ready of medicines and not wait for booking from the manufacturer
- Get near real-time visibility of the logistics breakdown, if any, and therefore plan for alternate movements
- Improved reputation of each stakeholder in the entire supply chain
All these in turn allow genuine medicines to be available at remotest of place in a short time at an affordable price. A total win-win for all players in the game and more importantly saving lives doing it!
Summary
Having understood the real-world challenges of Pharma Supply Chain, FarmaTrust does more than bring genuine medicine to the consumer. It allows stronger and trustworthy collaboration between supply chain stakeholders as also between countries supplying and those consuming the medicines.
This post is created in response to the requirement mentioned at: https://steemit.com/blockchain/@originalworks/260-steem-40-bonuses-sponsored-writing-contest-farmatrust
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