Four Major Pharmaceutical Companies Join Chronicled’s Blockchain Project

Four major pharmaceutical companies from the US have joined together to build a blockchain network for the health and pharmaceutical industry, according to a press release on May 2.

There is a lot of potential in the medical sector for blockchain-powered software solutions. Blockchain can provide standardization, support data collection and help organize data analysis and distribution across multiple regions. There has been a discouragingly small amount of efforts from the big pharmaceutical companies to adopt the blockchain technology. However, it seems like they might finally be catching up with the times.

McKesson Corporation, AmerisourceBergen Corporation, Premier Inc. and Pfizer Inc. have joined the MediLedger Project Contracting and Chargebacks working group. Chronicled Inc. is a San Francisco-based tech company specializing in blockchain technology, and MediLedger is its initiative to introduce blockchain technology into the logistics and data collection of the medical sector. The project is designed to build a common network for the participants in order to make contract reconciliation and chargeback processes easier all the while reducing costs and facilitating data sharing.

The network has already successfully established a protocol for saleable return drug verification. The process is claimed to be compliant with the 2019 Drug Supply Chain Security Act regulations.

The press release goes into some detail regarding the involvement of blockchain technology. Specifically, the press release talks about three major purposes of using blockchain technology in this project. First, to ensure that it “stores synchronized public data,” which means everyone has the same version of unaltered data. Second, to make the records collected on the network immutable, while maintaining a layer of confidentiality to “safeguards valuable business intelligence.” Finally, utilizing smart contracts to enforce business rules and process transactions to “ensure the integrity of the system.”

Chronicled CTO, Maurizio Greco, is thus quoted in the press release:

“Blockchain technology, in the context of MediLedger, ensures that there is one source of truth, and we can design it so only the license holder can create records for its own products, for example. This may seem like a simple illustration, but it is revolutionary.”

Furthermore, the platform does not provide a central repository for all data, which means that participants will have the option to choose which trading partners get to see their data instead of the partners getting access to all the data collected on the network without any filters.

This is an important feature in the network that gives power to those whose data is being collected instead of giving the data collectors monopoly over the data without any regard for these participants.