Twenty-five giant pharmaceutical companies, vendors, logistic partners, and other representatives of the pharma supply network have presented a report arguing in favor of adopting blockchain technology to track and trace prescription drugs after completing a trial program with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

During early 2019, the FDA started accepting offers for projects in search of to assist the office meet the 2023 standards of the Drug Supply Chain and Security Act (DSCSA) – which orders the pharmaceutical industry to track “legal adjustments in ownership of pharmaceuticals in the supply network.”

In June 2019, the MediLedger Project was accredited by the FDA, comprising a working group of 25 big corporations operating within the pharmaceutical supply network seeking to gauge the blockchain-based MediLedger Network as a car for tracking and tracing prescription medicines in the US.

MediLedger’s members include multinational pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer, drug wholesaler AmerisourceBergen, operator of the U.S.’ second-largest pharmacy chain Walgreens, multinational retail corporation Walmart, and delivery companies firm FedEx.

The report states the working group believes that the absence of “a central point of data sharing” will lead to the US pharmaceutical supply falling behind overseas competitors as firms “struggle with keeping data accurately and fully shared across all kinds of partners, systems, and technical formats.

The MediLedger project consisted of three core technologies: a private messaging system between shoppers by and trading companions, blockchain as an immutable, shared ledger for transaction validation and smart contract execution, and zero-knowledge to make sure robust privacy for transfers.

Source: https://elmiradaily.com/pharmaceutical-giants-urge-fda-to-employ-blockchain-for-medicine-tracking/3729/