The pharmaceutical sector happens to be significant for enhancing and sustaining public health. It is responsible when it comes to exploring, developing, producing, as well as marketing drugs and other pharmaceutical products. That said, it faces loads of challenges ranging from supply chain issues, counterfeit drugs, and data management. These problems can be effectively solved by way of blockchain technology.
The pharma industry, despite its importance in elevating public health, faces a lot of pressing challenges that can hinder its capacity to deliver the best outcomes. These issues can be categorised into the following areas:
Regulatory hurdles
The sector is subject to strict regulations that differ across various jurisdictions. Navigating these complex regulatory challenges can be both costly and time-consuming, thereby delaying the approval and launch of new drugs.Â
R&D costs and risks that are high
Manufacturing a new drug involves a substantial financial investment as well as significant risks. The high rate of attrition when it comes to drug development, teamed with an expensive and lengthy clinical trial process, can strain the resources of pharma companies, mostly the smaller ones.
Affordability and access to the market
Making sure that patients have access to drugs at affordable prices is a major concern within the industry. Factors like patient protection, policy on pricing, and reimbursement schemes can notably impact the cost and availability of drugs, especially in low- and middle-income nations.
Ethical challenges
This industry often goes through ethical dilemmas that are related to drug pricing, clinical trial conduct, and promotion. Balancing profit motives with the responsibility to manufacture safe as well as effective treatments for the patient population happens to be an ongoing issue.
All these challenges go on to present set of opportunities for the pharma sector to innovate and adopt new technologies such as Blockchain.
Blockchain happens to be a distributed and decentralised digital ledger that stores information securely. It has a chain of blocks, each of which contains a transaction set or data record. One of the major traits of blockchain tech is its decentralised nature. This means that no single entity, or for that matter, a centralised authority, controls the network. Another important aspect of it is immutability, which means that it is practically impossible for malicious users to go ahead with data tampering.
This technology was initially popularised by Bitcoin, one of the cryptocurrencies. However, today, its application goes beyond crypto. Its capabilities to help efficient data management as well as make transactions secure have sparked interest throughout various industries, such as healthcare and pharma.
It is well to be noted that blockchain technology has umpteen applications within the pharma gamut that offer novel solutions so as to address complex issues and overall elevate efficiency. Let us get into the details of how blockchain technology can be used across the pharmaceutical spectrum.
Supply Chain Management
The pharma supply chain is always regarded as complex and has numerous intermediaries and international border crossings. This complexity can lead to transparency lacunas, bottlenecks when it comes to logistics, as well as enhanced vulnerability in cases of theft and fraud, ultimately having an impact on the affordability as well as availability of the medicines. Blockchain technology can extensively improve transparency as well as traceability across the pharmaceutical supply chain. By developing secure and tamper-proof data for each transaction as well as the movement of the product, the technology helps the stakeholders trace and authorise drugs from their origin point to their final destination by efficiently thwarting counterfeit drugs and at the same time ensuring the safety of patients.
Clinical Trials
Blockchain can play a very significant role when it comes to streamlining the clinical trial processes by safely storing and sharing the trial data, ensuring its integrity and transparency. This helps in enhancing regulatory compliance, helps in faster and more efficient drug development, and in its entirety benefits the patients who happen to be completely dependent on treatments that are life-saving.
Patient data management
The pharma industry goes on to generate huge amounts of sensitive data, like clinical trial results, information about patients, and intellectual property. Making sure of secure storage and retrieval, data sharing happens to be very critical. However, it does remain a crucial issue because of fragmented systems, outdated technologies, and evolving threats pertaining to cyber technology. Blockchain can completely act as a revolutionary technology by way of providing secure and decentralised platform so as to store and also share sensitive information related to patients. All this not only helps with data privacy and security assurance but also enables a better partnership between healthcare providers, thereby enabling more efficient patient care.
Inventory management
Blockchain technology can help in optimising pharma inventory management by offering real-time visibility when it comes to the levels of stock, date of expiration of medicines, as well as their precise location. This elevated transparency helps in better forecasting and, at the same time, reduces the possibility of stockouts and wastage. It also makes sure of the availability of essential medicines for patients.
Application of R & D
Blockchain helps in securely sharing research data and IP, as well as coordinating efforts among pharmaceutical firms, research organisations, and also regulators. This enables more innovation, accelerates the discovery of drugs, and also helps in bringing novel treatments to the market in a swift way.
Counterfeiting prevention
Through the creation of a secure and tamper-proof record of drugs and transactions, blockchain can go on to effectively thwart counterfeiting, thereby protecting patients and also manufacturers from the risks associated with fake drugs.
Product distribution
Blockchain technology can also be put into optimising the distribution of products by way of sharing real-time data on product demand as well as inventory levels, allowing for a more effective allocation of resources and, in a way, helping to reduce the distribution cost as well.
Tracing, Tracking
The usage of blockchain when it comes to tracing as well as tracking pharma products helps in making sure that each product’s journey is effectively monitored right from the manufacturing facility to the hands of the consumer. This level of transparency happens to be very critical when it comes to authenticating the product and preventing counterfeits from entering the market.
Security as well as safety
Blockchain helps in enhancing the safety of the pharma industry and its security as well by helping with an immutable transaction and data record, thereby making it next to impossible for the unauthorised alterations as well as the tampering part to go unnoticed.
Governance of data
The decentralised nature of blockchain and the census mechanism in it enable enhanced data governance by ensuring that the data is stored, managed, as well as shared in a transparent and consistent way across all the people and associates that are involved.
Quality of data
The longevity of blockchain technology makes sure that the data is recorded on it in the most accurate, trustworthy, and reliable way possible. This trait is particularly crucial in a pharma setup when data quality is imperative for compliance with regulations as well as decision-making.
Turnover
The technology related to blockchain can indeed help in reducing pharma turnover by elevating the supply chain processes, reducing waste, and making sure that the products get distributed in the most efficient way. This helps in reducing costs for pharma companies and, at the same time, ensures the availability of drugs to patients in need.
Prescription Drug Monitoring
Blockchain technology can be used to develop secure, tamper-proof records of prescription drug consumption and dispensing, facilitate better monitoring, and analyse patterns of prescribing and the utilisation of drugs.
Challenges and Limitations of Blockchain Tech
Although blockchain technology has immense potential for the pharma sector, its adoption and execution come with limitations and challenges.
Legal Issues
The pharma sector happens to be heavily regulated with strict rules as well as guidelines that govern the various elements of drug manufacturing, development, and distribution. Integrating blockchain technology into the processes requires navigating the challenging regulatory spectrum and making sure compliance with all the laws and regulations. When it comes to the legal framework for data privacy and protection, they must be taken into account when executing blockchain-based solutions for the management of patient data.
Integration of existing systems
The pharma sector depends upon various legacy systems as well as technologies when it comes to managing data and conducting business operations. Integrating blockchain technology into these systems happens to be a challenging and particularly lengthy undertaking that requires substantial investments when it comes to infrastructure, support, and training. For successful execution, it is imperative to overcome any sort of resistance to transformation and ensure a smooth transition towards blockchain-based systems.
Technical Issues
Blockchain technology is relatively new and is still evolving, and there are a certain set of limitations that need to be addressed for its exact application in the pharma industry. For example, scalability happens to be a significant issue since large-scale blockchain implementations may go on to require enough computational resources and energy consumption. Making sure of data privacy on public as well as permission-free blockchains can indeed be quite a challenge.
The Future of Blockchain
The blockchain technology future in the pharma sector looks promising indeed. New innovation and developments are anticipated to emerge, with current limitations being addressed as well as unlocking new possibilities. For example, consensus algorithms, scalability advancements, and privacy protection techniques will likely elevate the performance as well as the applicability of the blockchain across the pharma sector.
Mixing blockchain with other newer technologies such as AI, IoT, and big data can help in availing even bigger transformative solutions. The future of blockchain within the pharmaceutical landscape holds a lot of potential when it comes to collaboration possibilities and innovation.
Conclusion
Blockchain technology can revolutionise the pharmaceutical industry by taking care of critical issues like counterfeit drugs, inefficiencies in the supply chain, and effective management of data. Although there are certain limitations and challenges, its future within the pharma landscape looks very promising indeed.
