The Asia-Pacific pharmaceutical giant Zuellig Pharma is using a blockchain platform by SAP to assist consumers identify the medicines place of origin. With 1 in 10 medicinal products that are used in developing countries deemed fake, there is a substantial need to eradicate counterfeit drugs that could pose a danger to patients.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), counterfeit drugs, while seemingly identical to the real thing, often “fail to properly treat the disease or condition for which they were intended, and can lead to serious health consequences, including death”.
However, cracking down on counterfeit drugs can be quite time-consuming. At Zuellig Pharma, a regional pharmaceutical giant in the Asia-Pacific region, state how it could take weeks to do so, as it needs to gather data from different parties across its supply chain. This is where the blockchain technology comes in to play. Zuellig Pharma has recently developed the ‘eZTracker’ smartphone app, powered by SAP’s blockchain platform, that lets consumers verify the authenticity of a drug and if it has been legitimately distributed by scanning a barcode.
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