New digital ID promises to improve security in pharma supply chains

PharmaLedger, a consortium of major pharmaceutical companies, is launching an initiative with the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), a not-for-profit G20 organization, to create a new digital ID for healthcare and pharma businesses.

The “verifiable Legal Entity Identifier”’ (vLEI) will be part of PharmaLedger’s blockchain platform. Only genuine healthcare or drug development businesses, however, will be able to onboard onto the online platform and carry out transactions.

Once on the platform, companies can exchange patient health information, data from clinical drug trials and information related to pharmaceutical products and supply chain partnerships online.

Visibility in the supply chain

The digital identifier is comparable to an international company ID card, containing an ISO-standardized 20-digit code that links to business information about a legal entity. This information can be easily verified so that organizations know precisely who they are doing business with.

For pharmaceutical supply chains this is particularly significant due to the number of stakeholders that are usually involved across different countries. There is often a lack of visibility into the business practices of suppliers, creating risks such as counterfeit medications entering the supply chain.

To tackle this, pharma companies have been investing in monitoring systems driven by Internet of Things (IoT) technology and third-party organizations to help them gain end-to-end visibility, while blockchain technology is increasing in popularity, with its market value set to grow from US$ 213mn in 2020 to an estimated US$ 2.6bn by 2030.

Daniel Fritz, Industry Project Lead at PharmaLedger, explains: “PharmaLedger needs to identify and verify companies and their representatives so that we can be sure that the firms joining the blockchain, together with the people authorizing the data being exchanged, are who they say they are.

“All blockchain-based data is immutable, of course, but now that we have the vLEI, we can also be sure that there are no false companies onboarding and initiating transactions. It also gives participants the opportunity to create trading relationships almost instantaneously, since everyone is armed with a hallmark of trust.”

Medicine verification

Additionally, regulators and manufacturers can create digital product information that patients can then scan on their medicine’s packaging to ensure it is genuine.

The initiative is backed by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), along with the 12 global pharmaceutical companies that are part of PharmaLedger including Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca, Bayer and Novartis.

Earlier this year Marco Cuomo, Manager in Applied Technology Innovation at Novartis and Pharma IQ Advisory Board member, told Pharma Logistics IQ that blockchain-based applications like this can only work when all participants adopt the same system.

Cuomo, also Architecture and Reference Implementation Co-Lead at PharmaLedger, said: “With blockchain the difference is that no one owns that system and the information is immutable.”

“To enable that you cannot do it alone, you need partners. That is why we started PharmaLedger. We want this to be an infrastructure that everyone can use, that belongs to everyone with no one to control it and no middleman.”

Quick links: 

• Watch: Pharma IQ Live: Digital Supply Chain
• Blockchain has potential to "change society"
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