Realizing Blockchain’s Security Potential Takes Work, Drug Companies Find

Security capabilities inherent in blockchain, such as automatic encryption, drew a group of pharmaceutical companies to the technology last year. Their interest was in finding a better way to track drugs and guard against thieves and counterfeiters. Those initial tests show that to make blockchain work in the supply chain, generic implementations aren’t enough. It’s a lesson that may be of interest to companies in other industries, where similar investigations are in various stages of planning and implementation. “Blockchain could meet our challenges, but out of the box, it doesn’t,” says Heather Zenk, senior vice president of strategic global sourcing at AmerisourceBergen Corp. The drug distributor and four other leading pharmaceutical companies in 2017 formed a nonprofit group, called MediLedger, to test blockchain for use in health care.