Every Pill You Take… Blockchain’s Watching You
Blockchain, given a chance, could track every pill and catch fake or unsafe medicines before they reach you.
The Gist
- Blockchain can ensure authenticity by assigning unique codes to medicine batches.
- It would secure prescriptions, preventing alterations and misuse.
- Real-time data access could enhance government response to public health challenges.
US stocks are known for their wild daily moves. Something similar happened to a stock on Friday.
On October 24, shares of a little-known American company, Wellgistics Health, jumped 260% — from $0.40 to $1.46 — in the first hour of trading on Nasdaq before ending the day with a gain of 185%.
The trigger was that the company had signed an agreement with Datavault AI to use PharmacyChain, a blockchain-based system that tracks medical prescriptions from the moment a doctor writes them to the time a patient collects the medicine.
The stock of Datavault, which owns PharmacyChain, also ended the day with a gain of 52%.
While there is an obvious business angle to the news, as investors were excited by this unique partnership, the story also served as a reminder of the transformational potential of blockchain in changing the way we do business or avail services.
Blockchain is like a notebook accessible by multiple parties. Each party can make an entry in the notebook at different stages. But once it’s there, you cannot change or delete it.
Using this powerful technology, we can change the way we receive healthcare — right from the time of seeing a doctor to getting the right medicines in the correct doses.
If India used the tech for tracking doctors’ prescriptions and subsequent purchases of medicines, it could solve several long-standing problems that plague our medical system.
Let's look at some of them.
Stopping Fake Medicines
One of the biggest threats to India’s healthcare system is the presence of fake or poor-quality medicines.
Even though India is one of the world’s largest producers of drugs, a small percentage of these medicines sold in the market do not meet quality standards.
Government surveys over the years have shown that about 3% of medicines tested in India were substandard.
According to a WHO report in December 2024, at least 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries are either substandard or downright fake.
Still, given the size of India’s population, even a small percentage means that millions of people could be at risk.
The danger became clear in recent weeks, when at least 17 children in the country died after taking a contaminated cough syrup that contained diethylene glycol at 48.6%, far above the permissible limit of 0.1%.
A blockchain system could have prevented this. Every verified batch of medicine would get a unique code that cannot be copied or changed. This code would be stored on the blockchain.
If some rogue elements try to insert fake or substandard medicines into the supply chain, they would be instantly caught because they are entering the chain at the wrong point.
With blockchain, harmful or ineffective drugs won’t be able to enter the system, ensuring that retail buyers get only genuine medicines.
Prescription for Change
Most doctors in India still write prescriptions by hand. Even digital copies are not always secure because anyone can alter or reuse them.
In a country like India, where people often feel free to self-medicate, these easily available prescriptions often lead to wrong dosages and misuse of antibiotics or scheduled drugs.
If the doctors' prescriptions are on the blockchain, there is no way someone can produce a fake copy, making sure that a patient gets exactly what the doctor prescribed.
Faster Decisions
Using blockchain technology would also make the government act faster and make decisions about public health.
Because all health data would be available in real time on the blockchain, authorities can keep an eye on the supply of medicines and their shortages.
They can also see if a particular illness is on the rise in a certain area. This can also be of immense help in dealing with an outbreak and supplying the necessary medicines to a certain region in time.
Not just that, this could also help in stopping the hoarding of medicines and their black-market sales.
In short, a system like PharmacyChain would help the government build a stronger and more efficient healthcare network.
There's no doubt that it will take time to build something like this, but it has to start somewhere. Let's begin by creating our own PharmacyChain.
This series is brought to you in partnership with Algorand.
