Following a newly introduced community initiative, we are conducting Q&A sessions with Ambrosus community on our Reddit. Community members can post their questions to the team, and the most popular (upvoted) questions will be answered by the team in a Community Q&A blog. Such Q&A sessions will be taking place once every two weeks, and answers will be provided every other Monday (when there is no bi-weekly progress report). We hope you enjoy. As always, any feedback or comments are appreciated!

Question 1: How does Ambrosus’ platform compare to the systems currently being implemented in the Euro-zone for pharmaceutical tracking?

Current systems used to implement the Euro-zone Pharmaceutical tracking regulations are cloud-based software systems that can be integrated with existing scanners or readers. They are normally very expensive, and only have a particular set of features they can record (i.e. serialization, batch recording, inventory management, etc.).

The Ambrosus Platform in relation to these existing systems is complimentary, but also more advanced in a number of different facets:

First, in terms of interoperability, existing software systems are very often only interoperable with other systems that are able to connect with their API, or their own system itself. This means that if two or three different supply chain actors each have their own software system, the systems cannot naturally communicate. Meanwhile, the benefit of AMB-NET is that the REST API (Hermes) has the possibility of receiving data from a host of different IT systems, scanners, and devices (assuming they can provide access to the data), storing that data, and then sharing that data again with specified parties in specified amounts (i.e. some data can be specifically shown to the EU, some to partner clients, and some to the consumer). It is a ‘level up’, when it comes to sharing data in a secure and private manner with customization around who gets to see what information.

Second, when it comes to security, Ambrosus provides a much higher degree of trust in the data itself that is being shared with the government. This is due to the blockchain. Currently, with many of the existing IT systems used for regulatory compliance, it is easy to edit or modify data after it has been recorded and in a manner where no one can verify or prove that the data has been altered. As this deficiency becomes more clear to enterprises in the future, they will continue to look for more secure ways of guaranteeing the quality of their data. For AMB-NET, this is the whole value proposition of the blockchain: Integral data management that cannot be altered, and that can be referred to as proof for any party if needed. This is especially important when it comes to product recalls, and identifying responsibility or mismanagement of a product.

Third, existing traceability solutions are very limited in the quality parameters that they are capable of recording. Since most providers are Software providers that provide cloud infrastructures, they are limited to integrating their software on scanners or readers that are already in place to read the products: they do not create their own scanners, unique identifiers, or any other IoT solutions. Ambrosus expands the realm of possibility when it comes to this aspect of compliance: by integrating different sensors around a pharmaceutical supply chain, enterprises are able to ‘kill multiple birds, with one stone’ = regulatory compliance, quality assurance, secure data storage, easless data sharing, and even smart contract based management of logistics and products.

Overall, the best way to think about the differences between the two is that while most existing solutions for traceability do just enough to scrape by — they are not optimized in other ways (be that in sharing data with third parties, collecting other types of data, securing that data and guaranteeing its integrity, etc.). Ambrosus is optimized in these other ways, far more cost effective if done ‘in-house’ and still also able to provide the basic requirements for ID and batch traceability that existing softwares currently provide.