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In the past few weeks, three pharmaceutical companies have released promising trial data from their COVID-19 vaccines, shedding a possible light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. While vaccines are yet to hit the market, discussion of distribution is beginning to emerge. Blockchain, a technology that makes data easy to verify and difficult to falsify, has entered the conversation.
MobiHealthNews sat with Mark Treshock, leader of blockchain solutions for healthcare and life sciences at IBM, to talk about how the technology could be an ingredient in the worldwide distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Essentially each of these vaccines, at least the ones currently under discussion, require two doses, so that’s two doses for every person on earth, so about 15 billion doses or 6 million in the United States,” Treshock said.
“This is a level of commitment that is just beyond anything we have done as a company. Confusing this is the fact that these vaccines are all different and are not interchangeable. So even if they treat or vaccinate against the same virus, they are different vaccines. “
He noted that all the vaccines we’ve seen so far also have different maintenance requirements, particularly varying temperatures. But this is not the only problem in the distribution. Ensuring vaccines are shipped to the right place and not diverted or stolen is another.
“This will be the most sought after, counterfeit, and likely diversion drug ever for the first six to 12 months after its release,” he said.
This is an area where blockchain could help. He noted that a blockchain feature is helping with supply chain integrity at various touchpoints. Therefore, he said, blockchain has the potential to track vaccines and make sure they haven’t been compromised.
“What you really want is to be able to take a bottle or a cowardly vaccine and … [have a] given the path that vaccine has taken, to make sure you can do it, to have integrity in the vaccine or temperature [and density], always kept in temperature conditions. As important as it is in the United States, it is doubly important in the developing world, where counterfeit drugs, for example, are already an incredible problem and cause a tragic loss of life every year. “
But vaccine tracking isn’t the only way blockchain can be employed, he said. It can also be used to help patients keep track of their vaccination records and provide proof of vaccination for travel, schools, and more.
“The idea is that if I can on my phone, for example, I have a verifiable and immutable credential which represents, let’s say, the fact that I have been vaccinated. I can show it to get on a plane, “he said.” And the TSA or an airline can scan it as much as they scan your boarding pass today. Because it’s blockchain, it’s immutable, so it ties back to a very verifiable record representing my status, in this case, let’s say it’s vaccinated. “
IBM has been working on a facility to address just this problem, called the IBM Health Pass, which would use the blockchain to verify a person’s COVID-19 status.
“It is based on a set of open standards called W3C, which define how federated privacy and how certain private data is stored and shared, which means that even if a city, state or company aerial uses the IBM health card, interoperable with other systems that follow this standard and vice versa. So, in this way, the world is not locked into a single proprietary application. “
Treshock said the blockchain could also be used to unify immunization records for the patient, specifically making sure the patient receives the right vaccine in a set of two.
“The two-dose challenge. Where you need two doses, they have to be within a set time frame, say 30 days, and they have to come from the same manufacturer, “he said.” So if your first dose is Pfizer, your second dose must also be Pfizer. . They are not interchangeable. When we start administering this vaccine on a large scale, it will be very challenging to coordinate. “
Treshock said he sees all of these blockchain systems working together perfectly. The dose of the vaccine will be monitored, the patient will have a record of his dose and then the patient will have proof of his vaccination. He also noted that having a record of the vaccine batch taken by the patient could be useful for booster situations.
“Like a tragedy of [COVID-19] It is, and it is an unspeakable tragedy, if we are able to put these kinds of structures in place around the supply chain or health data, it will be a great achievement for us.
“Now we are talking about the supply chain data and the context of [COVID-19]but these same problems are still present for other drugs, for other vaccines and then for other drugs in general, “said Treshock.” One thing that the pandemic has shown or clarified is that there is not really a great knowledge of provenance of the medicinal product. ”
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