What is FarmaTrust?
It is a platform designed to keep evidence of every legitimate drug ever produced. It is meant to fight counterfeit drugs being distributed.
What is the added value of the project?
Other than keeping the profits to the rightful producer and off the black market, there is a tremendous need for safety and efficiency in drug use. Let me explain using a few examples:
- In November 2017 World Health Organization released it's report and I quote "1 in 10 medical products in developing countries is substandard or falsified" (source).
- 2014 - over 10.000 online pharmacies shut down. The result: 8.4 million doses of fake drugs. Can you image the value of that in money or the health price?
- 2013 FDA identified and shut down 13.000 fake online pharmacies.
- Experts estimates that counterfeit drug market is at 75-200 billion dollars annually.
- WHO estimates that 50% of the drugs sold online are fake.
- Interpol estimates that 1 million people die each year because of counterfeited drugs. (source)
Considering all this companies have been trying to take measure. Most of them have created their own divisions that fight against this problem. Others invested hundreds of millions trying to secure their chain of distribution, like Eli Lilly did. You can read about it here: Lilly steps up war on counterfeits with $110M serialization program
When the pharmaceutical market is a 1 trillion dollars industry per year, the affected companies by counterfeited drugs are eager to address this problems especially since they lose 75-200 billions dollars per year. And the pharmaceutical companies are not the only ones that suffer. There are the people that need safety against this problem. And there are governments that have lower tax revenues because of this.
Before writing this article I knew little about the death of people caused by counterfeited drugs. Reading the whitepaper of FarmaTrust made me research the situation. Finding the horrific stories and statistics makes me want this project to succeed. Surely the solution offered by FarmaTrust won't be free, but it will be cheaper and more efficient than any solution available at this time.
How will they accomplish all that?
Since the solution has to keep records (products, tracking, obligations) that are unchangeable it is surely something that blockchain technology is able to offer. The platform will bring together every one from the chain of distribution, from manufacturers to shipping companies to pharmacies and hospitals. This way all will have access to needed information to make sure the products used by patients are genuine.
In the hope this review got you interested to know more about this project, here are their links.
Website - https://www.farmatrust.io/
Whitepaper - https://farmatrust.io/sites/default/files/whitepaper/FarmaTrust_Whitepaper_v10.pdf
Twitter - https://twitter.com/FarmaTrust
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/farmatrustchain
Telegram - https://t.me/farmatrust
