Monitoring Counterfeit Drugs using CounterChain
Mihir Chitre, Shubham Sapkal, Afi Adhikari, Shainila Mulla · 2019
With the advent of globalisation, the average Indian consumer now has the option to shop for a wide range of products across multiple channels. However, with this increase in product choices, one of the significant issues confronted by the industry today is the proliferation of counterfeit drugs in the marketplace. Drug, being a product which is widely used by the entire population irrespective of the economic class, it is crucial to ensure the authenticity of the drugs. Customers belonging to low-income groups tend to buy medicines and drugs from small local shops. In this scenario, it is difficult to ensure that the products are authentic as this class of customers has minimal exposure to the technological facilities. The existence of counterfeit drugs in the supply chain is considered extremely lethal to public health by the World Health Organization. World Health Organization claims that a significant portion of drugs consumed in low-income and middle-income countries is substandard, which leads to certain dangerous side effects and even deaths. Brand owners, online and offline retailers alike, have always struggled with addressing the issue of counterfeit drugs, finding an effective solution to this issue and to maintain consumer confidence in goods sold by them. Counterfeit drugs have an economy-wide impact on trade, investment and most importantly, on the health and safety of consumers. The lack of collaboration between various stakeholders like brand owners, intermediaries, retailers, etc. leaves the drug supply chain vulnerable to infiltration of counterfeit drugs. This paper introduces the concept of CounterChain, a blockchain based technology to implement a supply chain wide unified solution to increase supply chain visibility and consumer safety.