MSD - Blazing a trail with blockchain in the pharmaceutical industry

BLAZING A TRAIL WITH BLOCKCHAIN IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY P R O J E C T

PA R T N E R

C OV E R STO RY

BLAZING BLOCKCHAIN PHARMA

2

G A TRAIL WITH N IN THE ACEUTICAL INDUSTRY Alexandru Popa, Associate Director, Blockchain for Digital Supply Chain at MSD on pioneering transparency and accountability with patients in mind.

3

WITH A HISTORY SPANNING MORE THAN 130 YEARS, MSD’S MISSION IS TO BRING HOPE TO HUMANITY BY DEVELOPING MEDICINES AND VACCINES THAT SAVE AND IMPROVE LIVES.

4

he company’s research-driven approach has kept MSD at the forefront of numerous medical breakthroughs, contributing significantly to the current state of the global healthcare sector.

Since 2019, MSD pioneered the use of blockchain technology in the pharmaceutical industry with the

goal of protecting the patients it serves around the world.

Here to shine a light on the transformational journey and technology involved in the process is Alexandru Popa, Associate Director, Blockchain for Digital Supply Chain at MSD. Alex’s role entails developing, prototyping and scaling blockchain

5

“OUR COMPANY'S MISSION IS TO SAVE AND IMPROVE LIVES” Alexandru Popa, Associate Director, Blockchain for Digital Supply Chain

solutions focusing on security and traceability related to MSD’s supply chain operations. Alex leads crossdivisional supply chain endeavours, serving as a project and delivery manager for the company’s latest digital solutions and platforms, and acting as the company’s SME (subject matter expert) on blockchain technology. He also works in collaboration with industry partners and stakeholders to form consortiums and write governance related to these partnerships.

Before diving into some of the technological aspects of the deployment of blockchain and digital innovation at MSD, Alex emphasises the ‘why’ behind the company’s efforts since 2019.

“One of the problem statements behind why we are doing what we are doing is that counterfeit products have become a real problem in recent years for the pharmaceutical industry,” 6

explains Alex. “The World Health Organization’s estimates are that one out of 10 pharmaceutical products are administrated wrongly, substandard, expired or counterfeit. The situation is worse in developing countries, where these issues affect one in three pharmaceutical products.

“Our company's mission is to save and improve lives, so we questioned ourselves on what we can do better to combat and overturn this trend. Back in 2019, we reached the conclusion that blockchain was the best technology to create the first line

of defence for fully protecting our patients.”

So how does your organisation at MSD design its roadmaps for digital transformation and strategy?

“The way we operate, position ourselves and scale markets is centred around product, geography and capability – the latter binds in into the use case itself,” says Alex. “In terms of products, we focus on high-end flagship products, that distribute at a high volume. When it comes to geography, we centre our digital strategy around serialisation that

is serving as a digital anchor foundation for the specific market particularities we are serving.

The capability aspect arises from the unique dynamics of problem statements and the feasibility of blockchain solution deployment within the supply chain.

“Compared to the Fintech industry, where blockchain is approaching mature adoption, rolling out blockchain in the supply chain has its own unique challenges. Here we are creating a digital asset representation of moving, physical products. You have to close the gap between 7

the two realms and keep them on par, which we call the Last Mile gap.

“Geography is a crucial factor because each market has a different flow in terms of how the physical product is passing through that region but also the administration and distribution to patients. The product has a different journey and a different model from market to market because of complicated supply chain and complex distribution models. It then becomes hard to scale or standardise the solution.

So that's why this is a critical thing when we look into the geography as well, to understand where would

8

be easier to standardise a digital solution.

“With regards to approaching digital strategy roadmaps in terms of capabilities, the way we see digital transformation is more of an orchestration of people, processes and technology. They all have critical roles in this process, but the most crucial dynamic focuses on people and their role in digital transformation.”

According to Alex, the successful deployment of innovation and new technology hinges on team building, effective leadership strategies and collaboration.

“At MSD, we cover a very wide area of expertise and involve a diverse range of stakeholders in the solutions that we build,” explains Alex. “Typically, it involves several departments or teams, but I'm going to emphasise a few business functions. First, it involves supply chain management. Of course, you also must bring in IT-related or technology teams. Then there are also the regulatory, legal, financial, commercial and local market functions to consider as well.

“ONE OF THE FIRST PARTNERS THAT WE HAD ONBOARD WAS ZUELLIG PHARMA, A MAJOR DISTRIBUTOR IN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION”

Back in 2019 when MSD decided to pioneer blockchain technology in the pharmaceutical industry, it embarked on its journey with partners by its side.

use the technology to prevent the distribution of counterfeits. We built a common infrastructure running Hyperledger Fabric as the tech stack, where we both had nodes into the network. We linked this with our mobile applications to allow the patient to verify their medicines package. We also enabled a full custody chain, so throughout blockchain inherited properties we then have the transparency that enables us as manufacturers to upload the serialisation data onto the blockchain. Then, when the goods are leaving our pack sites, both the product and supply chain events are timestamped throughout the entire journey as the goods are moving down the supply chain, all the way to the patient.

“One of the first partners that we had onboard was Zuellig Pharma, a major distributor in the Asia Pacific region,” recalls Alex. “We were both on the same page when it came to exploring how we could

“The same happens when the distributor receives our products and then when they dispatch them – all this movement is recorded onto the blockchain. Ultimately the patients or healthcare practitioners

“Ultimately, our vision is to connect these companywide departments by forging a digital trust highway, built on a backbone of blockchain,” summarises Alex.

“People play a fundamental role in this endeavour, regardless of the innovative technology you use along the way, because you need understanding and consensus to execute integrated and impactful strategies effectively.”

9

Zuellig Pharma’s History of Innovation Making healthcare more accesible and improving lives Founded more than 100 years ago, Zuellig Pharma is one of Asia’s leading healthcare solutions companies, dedicated to the mission of making healthcare more accessible for the region’s populations.

We strive to provide interconnected, customercentric healthcare solutions through a cohesive ecosystem powered by digital and data. However, as technology grows more sophisticated and supply chains grow more complex, so does the threat of counterfeit medicines, fragmented data and more.

Zuellig Pharma wanted to reimagine supply chain resilience and greater compliance and transparency with true traceability and data analytics in mind. Our goal was to deliver a production-grade end-to-end traceability solution for the pharmaceutical industry with critical insights that matter.

Our Partnership with MSD Traceability in markets across Asia Zuellig Pharma and MSD share a common vision of putting patients at the heart of all that we do, and we are committed to harnessing the benefits of blockchain technology to drive transparency and visibility in the supply chain for greater product authentication and patient safety.

Zuellig Pharma’s blockchain partnership with MSD began in 2020 to enable the traceability of vaccines in Hong Kong.

Our longstanding partnership with MSD continues today – we have expanded the technology to other markets and products, and are committed to supporting MSD in ensuring greater traceability from plant to patient, tracking and tracing product and material movements across the value chain.

We remain relentless in our joint pursuit of providing safe healthcare for all and will continue to build capabilities to support digitally enabled end-to-end supply chains, overcoming traditional data siloes.

10

How eZTracker Works as an Ecosystem Solution Built on Hyperledger Fabric (a distributed ledger platform), eZTracker strives to achieve industryleading standards as a supply chain traceability solution. It is capable of mapping the chain of custody down to the unit level to improve visibility through the provision of a digital identity, helping users make better decisions faster with granular insights via dashboards.

As a dedicated ecosystem solution for the healthcare industry, eZTracker is one of the ways Zuellig Pharma leverages digital innovation to provide patient-centric and industry-enabling solutions for the pharmaceutical industry.

Zuellig Pharma has also become a Patron Member of the PharmaLedger Association™ (PLA), a global not-for-profit based in Switzerland, with the vision to connect, protect, empower, build and sustain Healthcare 4.0 by enabling a Digital Trust Ecosystem in Healthcare (DTE-H). As part of our work with PLA, we are excited to define the future of healthcare with through next-generation digital solutions.

Manufacturer

Warehouse & Distribution

Patients & HCPs

Pack-level serialisation for vaccines to enable tracking

Track and trace solution: Scanning to update product data and movement

Scan code to verify if products are from authorised source.

Report unrecognised products.

Reports & Dashboards:

Data shared:

Report:

• Fraud Investigation

• Product Status

• Adverse Events

• Traceability

• Inventory Count

• Unrecognised Scans

• Datafeed

• System of Records

Data shared: Geolocation, Time Stamp, Images, Added Information

Other Digital Traceability Programmes Available

• • • •

E-Product Information Treatment Traceability Solution Awareness and Education Referral Programmes

• Clinic / Pharmary Locator • Adherence Reminders • Cold Chain Monitoring

Find out more at www.zuelligpharma.com

11

can use a mobile app to verify and scan the 2D barcode printed on the packs. The pack serialisation data is verified on the blockchain.

The custody chain also serves as a second layer of verification, clearly establishing if the product followed the legitimate supply chain. In some cases, the technology will alert patients if products are suspected of being illegitimate, or for instance when the medicines are diverted from the market authorised routes. The patients are notified whenever their medication cannot meet the verification criteria on the blockchain.

12

“These measures ultimately reduce the ‘cost of verification’ by providing a decentralised and transparent ledger, which eliminates the need for intermediaries and streamlines the validation process. We have global security teams investigating any cases where our protective measures are triggered. In this case, blockchain technology is tremendously reducing also the time they spend executing field investigations or understanding where and how products were falsified.

“On top of these various protective measures, we have also built

partnership which make it such a strong collaboration,” says Alex.

“First, our work together started with a common vision and the same thinking in mind: what we do, ultimately, is protect and safeguard the health of patients.

Both companies are passionate about ensuring that the medicines patients use are legitimate, effective products. The drive to save and improve lives binds us together.

“Second, our partnership allows us to close the gap between the upstream and downstream. We can offer them a partnership upstream and they become a partner to us downstream, offering a comprehensive end-to-end supply chain from the manufacturer all the way to the patient. business intelligence dashboards that collect information and data.

The 2D barcode printed on the back of our products becomes the birth of its digital twin. It serves as a digital anchor for the real product, closing the gap between the physical and the digital world.”

Elaborating on the importance of MSD’s partnership with Zuellig Pharma, Alex highlights the companies’ shared mission as a driving force for their combined endeavours.

“There are three major aspects to the MSD and Zuellig Pharma

“Lastly, both of our companies are super open to innovation – we are both always looking into new ways for how we can foster collaboration and work towards common goals using innovation.”

Alex explains that developing and deploying new technologies and digital strategies related to blockchain is only the first part of his role and the work of his team at MSD – it is then a question of scaling these innovations.

“At MSD, our organisation operates as a Centre of Excellence for Blockchain and we are fortunate to 13

Supercharge your growth.

Build digital supply chain resilience with eZTracker.

Learn more

Choose the traceability solution modules you need and scale on demand.

Serialise Products and Treatments with Digital IDS

Activate Traceability Solutions

Robust Data Dashboards and Traceability Reports

Engage our compliant serialisation and redressing services in Asia.

Choose from various plug and play modules to accelerate growth and meet business goals.

Unlock actionable insights to solve real-world business challenges.

Why Clients Choose eZTracker Protect patient safety and top-line Through just one scan, eZTracker provides peace of mind in real-time and improves visibility over product movement and highlights problematic hotspots or child codes.

Drive sustainability and cost savings Digital programmes like e-labelling help cut down paper usage while enabling the latest approved product information to be easily accessible.

Elevate brand plans with an omnichannel Engage HCPs and Patients digitally to increase demand generation, encourage adherence and accelerate commercial growth.

Contact eztracker@zuelligpharma.com 14

www.zuelligpharma.com

have senior leadership support,” says Alex. “Our organisation is built around blockchain and supply chain management, but then we also partner with local markets and local divisions in order to be able to scale the projects in the regions where we are addressing the problem statements.”

Since MSD embarked on its blockchain journey in 2019, the company has transformed its digital supply chain strategy

“EPCIS provides the standardisation framework for sharing information about the movement and status of the goods in the supply chain from manufacturer to consumer, ensuring transparency and traceability. This framework ensures that the events we record are understandable and readable in the blockchain and can be understood and replicated by all participants in the blockchain ecosystem.

“SINCE MSD EMBARKED ON ITS BLOCKCHAIN JOURNEY IN 2019, THE COMPANY HAS TRANSFORMED ITS DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGY ALONG THE WAY” along the way and Alex highlights some new applications which are enhancing the company’s operations.

“We have revolutionised our data access flow,” begins Alex.

“Typically from our enterprise ERP systems, the serialisation data gets uploaded onto the blockchain. We achieve this through what we call message orchestration hubs. These hubs work as a plug-in adapter and can translate ERP serialisation data which is in GS1 EPCIS, which is an electronic product code information service.

“We're using APIs to do that and a key component to this is blockchain agnostic solution is the message orchestration hub we developed, that allows us to translate these messages.

“We added an analytics layer where we plugged in dashboards with insight and diagnostic services, as well as an application layer where different companies or partners linking to the blockchain network can develop various applications on top of the network. This can include native mobile applications or Progressive Web Applications 15

16

that would support different processes while reading and writing the data onto the blockchain network. We use Hyperledger Fabric for opensource projects and we also have projects running on private Ethereum.”

So, what does the future hold at MSD for blockchain?

Alex explains that it all depends on how current technologies evolve and mature.

“I think we are still fairly early in the blockchain space,” says Alex. “We are probably where the internet was in the early 2000s. Blockchain can evolve in several different directions from here. My personal take is that public blockchains are going to get more attention for corporate use moving forward. One interesting development centres around whether the confidentiality of transactions is going to be figured out or resolved by zero-knowledge proofs for public blockchains. Another aspect that might come to prominence is whether Layer 2 rollup solutions are going to be proven at 17

a large scale. I believe these will be some of the big topics in the next few years to come in terms of blockchain and enterprise-level deployment.

“Lastly, what I predict is that AI and machine learning may be closing the gap when analysing all this data, in terms of optimising the product flows and supply chain routes. But before this can happen, first we need to have solutions of scale and be able to collect huge amounts of data and sort the data in order to make sense to apply AI on top of blockchains.”

Wrapping up our discussion, Alex reiterates the importance of industrywide collaboration

18

and the role of consortiums in facilitating progress benefitting the entire digital ecosystem.

“Building consortiums is a tremendously important part of my role,” insists Alex. “Blockchain doesn't make sense if you're doing it in isolation. If you're doing it just for yourself as a company, it doesn't bring value.

The true value that it brings is through collaborating and building ecosystems with other participants, united by the idea that we can all benefit from the technology.

“The main problem that blockchain solutions face in mainstream adoption is the lack of collaboration. We need faster,

more effective collaboration and the best way to do that is through ecosystem-driven consortiums, where everybody has an equal right to participate. The goals of consortiums should be, first, to close the gap of creating standards around the blockchain solutions that are going to be scaled and promoted. This is missing right now. Second, blockchain is getting traction but it's still in a tribalised manner, mostly. But through building consortiums, we can overcome these divisions.

“The PharmaLedger Association consortium is a fantastic example of a project aiming to create a standard for blockchain solutions in the healthcare industry. It’s encouraging and great to see happening.

“MSD is now part of the PharmaLedger Association consortium, and we are actively participating in the ecosystem to create and shape new standards for the industry. We were true pioneers of blockchain technology within the pharma industry back in 2019 and we are continuing that journey as part of the consortium to share the lessons we learned along the way and the expertise we’ve secured in the process.”

To learn more about MSD, visit msd.com.

ON SUCCESS AND DIVERSE CURIOSITY Looking back over his career, Alex attributes much of his professional success to his curious nature.

“I have various, diverse interests and I can go very deep into them,” explains Alex. “From technology, philosophy and history to competitive sports, I find tremendous value in cultivating a curious mindset. Maintaining these various interests helps me to understand the world better and have a more comprehensive view of it. This helps me in my professional life where I take this curiosity and apply it to developing, scaling, innovating and building digital products. Curiosity is an enabling force because it enhances the way you relate to different people and different environments, helping you connect the dots in a way that benefits your work no matter what industry you are in.”

Connect with Alex 19

msd.com

20