In January 2020, the Pharmaledger consortium began as a 36-month project to explore blockchain innovation in the pharmaceutical sector. As he is about to enter his 34th month, the group wants to make sure his work continues. Therefore, the 29 members of the consortium, including a dozen large pharmaceutical companies, have endorsed the creation of the non-profit Pharmaledger Association, which will continue its work.

The original consortium was backed by €22 million ($21 million), with some of the money coming from the EU-backed Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and the rest from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). ) under the Horizon 2020 programme.

In the future, the Pharmaledger Association will be funded by membership fees, so it seeks to expand the number of participants. It could also generate revenue from companies that want your help with their own use cases.

The Swiss-based Association will bring some of the consortium’s work into production and will also incubate new solutions.

The consortium has explored various use cases for distributed ledgers (DLTs) in clinical trials, supply chain, and health data. Electronic Product Information (ePI) is the most advanced and will be the first to be released.

If you buy any type of medicine, the box usually has a paper insert that contains details about the medicine, such as its chemical content, dosage, and side effects. Scanning a barcode on a package will give you the same details and will also alert you if it’s past its expiration date. That functionality is a first step with the potential to add significantly more functionality.

The ePI solution uses the Quorum enterprise blockchain version of Ethereum, and other blockchain protocols are being explored.

“EFGCP has strongly supported the creation of the PharmaLedger Association to ensure that patients, clinicians and other stakeholders can increasingly benefit from the innovation provided by this IMI project in the future,” said Ingrid Klingmann, President of the European PharmaLedger Forum. Good Clinical Practices (EFGCP). .

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, MediLedger has explored a different set of blockchain use cases.