Building Trust in Healthcare

GM, GM!

You know how we break down the Web3 use cases every week in 4.3 minutes:

• 😰 The challenge

• 💡 The solution

• 👀 Take away for other industries

Do you know, if the origin of your medicine is legit?

😰 The challenge

I don't. I trust the pharmacist and the doctor. But we all saw that there were counterfeits during the Corona pandemic.

It is not uncommon to find fakes of other "popular" drugs. Pills from shady labs can be smuggled in and put on the market with fake certificates. No one knows what dangerous ingredients are in them.

In a highly regulated market like my home country, Germany, this happens very rarely. But in other countries, it happens a lot more than you might think.

💡 The solution

Zuellig Pharma, the century-old healthcare giant, wants to tackle this problem.

Since 2018, the Asian company has been looking at blockchain as a technology to prevent counterfeit healthcare products. Together with its partner SAP, it has developed the eZTRacker platform.

It helps to

• Authenticate product sources

• Monitor cold chains

• Automatically restock when inventory is low

• Keep product information up-to-date - say goodbye to printed paper inserts

• Report adverse reactions and suspect products

In June 2016, Zuellig Pharma announced that it would become a patron member of the PharmaLedger Association (PLA). PLA's vision is to connect, protect, empower, build and sustain Healthcare 4.0 by enabling a Digital Trust Ecosystem in Healthcare (DTE-H).

Zuellig Pharma will leverage the blockchain expertise of its internal team to contribute to PLA's key business cases, such as track & trace, distribution re-channeling, e-product information (e-labeling) and cold chain monitoring.

👀 Take away for other industries

What started as a proof of concept (PoC) is now growing into an international ecosystem.

Perhaps Zuellig Pharma had something like this in mind at the beginning of its blockchain journey, but in 2018 it first focused on a working prototype for its own products. Only gradually did it become clear that there were more pharmaceutical companies around the world working on similar use cases.

It was important to share ideas with their "competitors", to learn from each other. Gradually it became clear that they were all pursuing the same vision, and the research project became the non-profit organization PLA. Here, international pharmaceutical companies are laying the groundwork for a global industry standard.

Zuellig Pharma would not be in a leading position to help define this standard if they had buried the idea in 2018. So if you want to contribute to a globally accepted standard, it's worth doing your research and experimenting now.

Of course, no one can say exactly how the future will unfold, but if you don't do something now, you'll just be the one running along, subject to a standard.

🫵 What do you want to be? Shaper or follower?

I'm not a shaper by any means, but with this newsletter I want to shed some light on real-world Web3 use cases besides crypto and marketing. I started it because I was always reading about "how Web3 helps to increase your branding" or "how to make more money with digital collectibles". I wanted to read about the "boring" processes, the dirty industrial work, the stories that have been working for years.

I couldn't find such a condensed blog, so I started one. So far I've gotten very good feedback, thank you for taking the time to read this.

Can I ask you a favor?

If you want to shed some light on these "boring" Web3 use cases, it would help if you share an article with a friend, a colleague or on your socials. It would mean a lot to me! 🙏

Hope you liked this weeks story!

See you next week,

Florian