Medicines Medicines Everywhere
Why do you take a medicine? The obvious answer is to get well!
do you know that 3 out of 10 medicines that you buy could be counterfeit?
At a global scale as per PWC report (https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/reports/counterfeit-pharmaceuticals),
"up to 30% of all drugs in circulation are fake, leading to up to a million deaths annually, including 450,000 preventable deaths from malaria alone"
The bad news with these counterfeit pharmaceuticals is that they may have toxic ingredients like rat poison, floor wax, and industrial chemicals.
The idea of this post is not to scare you but to bring to your notice the stark reality of the counterfeiting prevalent in the medicine world and how end users like you and me can easily check if the medicine we are consuming is genuine or counterfeit using the FarmaTrust.
Not only the consumers but also the manufacturers, Governments, Law enforcing agencies, Health Ministry, NGO's, Supply chain companies and shipping agencies would be able to monitor the authenticity of the medicines they are handling thanks to the real time and automated data flow that is being implemented by FarmaTrust using its ZOI Blockchain ecosystem.
A little insight deeper insight into how much damage the counterfeiters are bringing to the pharma industry
For a long time the less developed markets have been the easy targets of those pushing the counterfeit pharmaceuticals. However with the advent of digital channels even the developed countries have become easy targets for the pharmaceutical counterfeiters. The PMMI's 2016 Brand Protection and Product Traceability report found that “medicines bought over the internet that conceal their physical address are counterfeit in more than half the cases.
The pharmaceutical industry is such that point of production and point of consumption are in different parts of the world and as the medicines pass through different borders and different channels on their way to reach their final destination in the hands of consumers or point of consumption there are plenty on opportunities for counterfeit pharmaceuticals to get into the system despite the strict US and European track and trace regulations.
Enter FarmaTrust with its Zoi ecosystem
With its blockchain based solution powered with big data ZOI is creating a method to better track and trace Pharmaceutic products from the time it leaves the manufacturer to the point it reaches the consumer.
It does that by monitoring all possible entry and exit points of pharmaceutical products as it passes from the manufacturer to the consumer.
FarmaTrust has created Zoi a blockchain based supply chain information exchange platform to securely track and trace the pharma products as they pass through various distributors and supply chain operators providing traceability and data services.
Who could be interested in using such a service
Starting with Manufactures who want only genuine products sold under their brand names should reach the consumers
Supply Chain Companies, Shipping companies, warehouses : As a more efficient and more cost effective system that would integrate into their current software to track each packet.
Governments: They are genuinely concerned with the welfare of their people and want keep a tab on counterfeiters and get real time information of pharmaceutical products as they move through the supply chain.
Ministry of health: As health related policy makers and involved in its implementation they may need to know how much stock of which medication is available in a state or their country to manage a helath related epidemic or immunization drive.
The Law enforcing agencies : They do try to keep a tab on the movement of counterfeit drugs but a real time network giving them quick and easy to use information about the presence of counterfeit drugs on the move gives them that much more teeth to act and catch the culprits and weed out the counterfeit medications from the system
NGO: As those involved in public welfare and possible watch dogs trying to wade off malpractices like price manipulation and promoting public health they can play an important part with the right information in their hand.
The End Buyer and Consumer: Every consumer has a right to know the about the genuineness of the medication that he is buying.
With Pharma Trust zoi blockchain in place all the consumer needs to do is scan the pharma packaging with the Pharma Trust App.
This is how the whole thing works
If you look at the graphic above you would see that once the pharma product is packed and a package label is applied to it then it passes from the
Manufacturer => Distributor=> Hospital/POS or Online Pharmacy, its movement is tracked and recorded. To do this the FarmaTrust API generates a Blockchain transaction.
This helps in verifying the authenticity of the package.
To find if the Drug Package is genuine or Counterfeit all that a user needs to do is scan the code on the package via the FarmaTrust app and this tracks and validates the authenticity of the package.
FTT and ZOI Tokens
To facilitate the smooth flow of information the Zoi blockchain has its own tokens
The Farma Trust would issue FTT tokens which are standard ERC 20 publicly trade-able digital assets that you need to own in order to be a part of the Zoi ecosystem.
The other types of tokens are the Zoi tokens
Let us see how the tokens work to makes things work in the Zoi ecosystem
First a person holding FTT Tokens creates an account on the Zoi platform.
He loads the tokens in the Staking wallet of the Zoi platform
As a result the staking wallet earns him 500 ZOI tokens per 100 FTT tokes staked every 7 days.
These ZOI tokens can be used by account holders,Pharma companies,governments,NGO's, Law enforcing agencies to access information about the products on the Zoi platform.
As a result of such usage the Zoi tokens are burnt.
So basically a pharma company could stake 100 FTT in the compliance Tracking Token Smart Bond.
"A smart Bond is a smart contract that binds the FTT tokens to a new batch of serialized keys that is generated by the package manufacturer to meet the track and trace compliance requirements"
Each product packet is given a unique serialized product key.
The Compliance Tracking token digitally tracks these individual Packets through its journey via the supply chain and product life cycle.
On sale or return of the product packets the Compliance Tracking Tokens are burnt.
The data associated with the Compliance Tracking tokens is stored in an archive for future reference.
When all the Compliance Tracking Tokens of a batch are burnt then the smart bond releases the FTT tokens held in the smart bond and they can be reused.
Thus a Compliance tracking token is not a cryptocurrency but a digital reference to the serialized Product key of a product on a block chain.
In case a pharma company does not have FTT tokens to stake then it can direcly buy the ZOI tokens. A company can acquire the FTT & ZOI tokens from the ZOI exchange
"Thus the ZOI tokens can be used to access and pay for data requests on ZOI platform"
The genuineness of the packet can be verified by the consumers, hospitals, NGO's and retailers by scanning the products for the serialized product key.