Experts were out in force at Coindesk’s Consensus 2019 last week to talk about the state of blockchain in pharma. Among them was Scott Mooney, Vice President of Distribution at McKesson, America’s largest drug distributor, which is ranked #7 on the Fortune 500 list.

“It’s a very broad and diverse space,” he tells an audience while speaking at a panel on blockchain and pharma supply chains.

“It’s tough when you suddenly say where does blockchain fit pharma? You have to boil it down to sub-use cases,” Mooney explains, “We’ve looked at a variety of different things. Some have a lot of meat on the bone and look very viable.”

It remains crucial, he adds, to only seek blockchain solutions where it can provide clear value over existing tools already at their disposal.

CoinDesk’s Consensus 2019

Does Africa need drug vending machines?

Out of all the use cases being looked at, Bitcoin pioneer Vinny Lingham believes that there is currently an overemphasis on what blockchain can do for the massive U.S. pharma industry.

“Some of these use cases are very relevant in the U.S.” he says, “But when you get outside the U.S. it dramatically changes. For big diseases, things like HIV, there is a lot of stigma attached to these diseases, so people living in rural areas often do not seek healthcare.”

The answer could lie in an automatic vending machines which takes prescriptions and distributes the correct drugs. With no humans looking at the individual’s data, Lingham thinks this will encourage more people to seek treatment.

As CEO to Civic Technologies, whose focus is on privacy, Lingham stresses that the idea is not to store data on the blockchain but instead to store data securely on user devices. Blockchain becomes useful by making it possible to give access to third parties in a safe and private way.

“We see authentication and identity as being our application,” he says, “Allowing people to do verification on their ID and information, so people can plug in and sort themselves. The notion that you should have this broadcast blockchain with everyone’s personal information on it is not going to work.”

Blockchain can help big pharma save lives

Verifying information at consumer level could be key to unlocking the potential of blockchain in pharma. Other use cases that Scott Mooney expresses enthusiasm for include supply chain tracking, contracts for distribution and sale, and even chargebacks.

Common themes are transparency, efficiency and convenience; all aspects that would provide immense value to pharmaceutical companies. But, also, to the consumer, especially if those in the United States begin to see their cost of healthcare lowered as a result.

But in terms of saving lives, reliably delivering drugs to people in developing countries is where blockchain might bring its most clear and immediate benefits. This, Lingham would argue, is probably more important.

Vinny Lingham discusses healthcare and blockchain

The Merger of Blockchain and Pharma Goes Beyond Supply Chain

We see blockchain as far more revolutionary to the pharmaceutical industry than transparency, efficiency, and convenience. We see blockchain as transforming the very nature of science.

Blockchain technology allows for the crowdsourcing of science like never before. Our First to hash protocol allows for immutable IP tracking. Here’s why that’s important.

Historically, big pharmaceutical companies have been reserved in how much information they share with other organizations. Their IP is likely their most valuable asset.

If a system existed where a big pharmaceutical company could prove that they were responsible for a drug innovation, they might be more open to sharing the information which would spur scientific innovation.

Imagine a world where a scientist at a big pharma company collaborated on a new medicine with an academic and a citizen scientist. This sort of scenario often doesn’t happen enough in this world, and it slows the pace of innovation on the drug discovery front.

Collaboration tracking on blockchain changes this, and Matryx’s timestamping features enables exactly this. In the not so distant future, we anticipate Nanome users will be using Nanome and Matryx simultaneously to keep track of their drug innovations in virtual reality.

To learn more about the Nanome-Matryx vision for the future of pharma and blockchain, read the blog announcing our mainnet release.