In Nigeria, a company sees a viable solution in blockchain technology to bring transparency and security to the pharmaceutical industry and help combat one of the biggest problems affecting global public health.
Counterfeiting of medicines is a practice that is increasingly affecting the world's population and has a greater impact in Africa, where financial and human losses due to this bad practice have become alarming, according to data from the United Nations.
Due to the seriousness of this problem, the startup Web3, Hyperspace Technologies, whose headquarters are located in the city of Lagos (Nigeria), highlights the use of blockchain technology as a powerful tool that will help mitigate drug counterfeiting and prevent fraud in the pharmaceutical industry.
According to the company, blockchain has the potential to bring greater trust and security to the pharmaceutical industry, and to protect consumers in general.
More security and transparency in the pharmaceutical industry
Oluseyi Akindeinde, CEO of Hyperspace Technologies, highlighted during a recent interview with Sunday PUNCH that blockchain technology can significantly strengthen security in the pharmaceutical industry, optimizing the efforts being made by various organizations and actors to mitigate counterfeiting of these products and to offer an efficient and innovative solution that guarantees security and transparency in the supply chain of this sector.
Akindeinde explained that blockchain provides a much simpler way for consumers to verify the authenticity of medicines.
Smart contracts and NFTs
Specifically, the CEO of Hyperspace Technologies pointed out that pharmaceutical chains can serialize their medicines using the blockchain. That is, they can record all the information relevant to their products, from the raw materials used, to the processing of the products, transportation and distribution, on the blockchain.
In this way, people can access this information, to check the authenticity of a medicine, using their smartphones. Akindeinde indicated that, for example, medicines can have a special printed code or serial number, which consumers can scan through a compatible Web3 application, to access in real time all the information related to the product, which is stored immutably on the blockchain.
Akindeinde also said that this code or serial number can be created as a non-fungible token or NFT on the blockchain, or that pharmaceutical companies can use smart contracts to create unique and immutable identifiers for each drug. This will help verify the authenticity and provenance of drugs, making it difficult to counterfeit them.
In 2023, Hyperspace Technologies was granted a patent for its blockchain-integrated contactless product verification system, which enables product authentication through NFT tokens.
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