





Supply chain visibility ensuring authenticity of drugs
As part of the C4CS initiative, all the partners performed a research, aimed to create ReferenceModels (supply chain simulations), to explore the use of blockchain technology within the pharmaceutical supply chain for the purposes of meeting year 2023 obligations of the DSCSA in phase 1 of the initiative. Now, under the Phase 2 of the initiative, proof of concept pilots study will be conducted to build on that body of knowledge to take the ReferenceModels out of simulation and into limited pilots using actual blockchain technology.
Company
Pfizer
Merck & Co.
Cardinal Health
AmerisourceBergen Corp
Geisinger health system
Healthcare Distribution Alliance
Rx-360
iSolve
TraceLink
Unisys
Verify Brand
Status
In process
Tags
- Drug Supply Chain
- Pharma
- Pharma distributors
- Provider
- Health Alliances/Consortiums
- Tech






Problem statement
Establishing trust between trading partners and compliance with the US Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA).
Approach
The team created and evaluated various simulated supply chain scenarios (ReferenceModels) that helped to visualize the results.
Technical details
A simulated environment was created that allowed the team to test certain hypotheses. The results of the simulations and the data generated are known as ReferenceModels. Below are the three ReferenceModels:
- ReferenceModel 1: Stocks the complete Transaction Information (TI) in a shared blockchain platform for retrieval. Also, transact Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) events straight between trading partners to connect the contents of shipments and logistics units.
- ReferenceModel 2: Stocks address to trading partner portals/repositories of Transaction Information (TI) for recovery in an industry-shared blockchain platform. Also, transact EPCIS events staright between trading partners to communicate the contents of shipments and logistics units.
- ReferenceModel 3: Send DSCSA Transaction Information (TI) to blockchain platform distributed applications (DApps) that assess the data and store present “states” of the individual Product identifier. An enlarges version comprises of shipment hierarchy and may reduce the need to transact EPCIS events directly between trading partners.
As supply chain stakeholders are currently working through serialization of drug products, there are not enough of them to fully pilot any of the ReferenceModel designs. The next steps are to move from a simulated environment to test environments where the technology can be explored using test or simulated data. Once the stakeholders begin to converge on single model and can engage in connecting internal systems to a test environment, full pilots and implementations will follow.
Published white paper for study findings
Presented
IEEE Blockchain for the Pharma Supply Chain Forum 2017
Presented
Cold Chain Global Forum Annual 18
Presented
FutureLink 2018
Presented
{"Distributed"=>"Health 2018"}
Presented
2018 Blockchain Healthcare Forum
Presented
{"Interphex 2018"=>"PharmaTech Keynote Series"}
Presented
{"Symposium"=>"World of supply chain management 2018, Rider University"}
Presented
References
http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?17177
http://pharmaceuticalcommerce.com/information-technology/blockchain-technology-make-dscsa-work-2023/
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/blockchain-use-case-healthcare-supply-chain-0
https://blockchainhealthcaretoday.com/index.php/journal/article/view/20/36#toc
https://www.c4scs.org/white-papers/
This use case first appeared on Chain 76 Use Cases — a review of blockchain technology implementations and deployments in the pharma and healthcare sectors.