Drug procurement by way of blockchain at govt hospitals in a single yr

In a yr’s time, state and central authorities hospitals could possibly get an assurance of the authenticity and high quality of medicines procured in bulk utilizing the Government e-Marketplace (GeM). This is as a result of the portal goals to make blockchain expertise in making certain traceability of those medicines from the purpose of provide to their last vacation spot, as per its chief govt officer.
“We have successfully tested this in a Proof of Concept (PoC) in the UP Medical Supply Corporation and the Director General of Armed Forces Medical Services. Now, based on the learnings, in my opinion in the next week we will make the bid document,” mentioned GeM CEO Talleen Kumar throughout a media briefing Wednesday.
“We will float that and, in a transparent bidding process, we will bring in a system integrator to develop a blockchain as part of … the digital supply chain infrastructure so that any state or entity, if it wants to procure a medicine, can use this blockchain,” he added.
According to Kumar, the finalisation within the request for proposal (RFP) course of will take about three months, whereas the implementation is more likely to take “at least” 9 months. “We’re looking at (rolling this out) one year from now, but the good thing is that we’ve done the PoC and, from that, we’ve learnt what challenges are there while onboarding a buyer.”
Blockchain is a ledger expertise that permits knowledge storage in lots of servers in a decentralised method and considered practically in real-time by anybody with entry.

Kumar mentioned this expertise in will give consumers the “comfort” of figuring out that the medicines they’re procuring are from the identical provider that that they had positioned the order with and that there was no tampering with its high quality. “In case of a medicine, even though it may not be spurious, it may be rendered ineffective if the proper temperature controls are not met.”
“Blockchain technology has the capacity to do both — to give you traceability … it also tells you whether, on the way, the temperature control limits set (to maintain the quality of the medicines) were followed. Through the internet of things (IoT), this data also comes in the ledger,” he added.