The Stratis project has announced a partnership with UK-based online pharmacy, UK Meds. The partnership will involve the use of Stratis’ blockchain technology in the recording of patients’ prescriptions, ensuring that patients receive their prescribed medication quantities.
Multiple prescriptions can be an issue with online pharmacies, as not all online pharmacies require prescriptions for purchase. Furthermore, the logging of patient data will allow online consultants to cross-reference patients, as each patient will have a unique identifier assigned to them.
CEO of UK Meds, Joe Soiza, is hopeful that immutable ledgers can prevent unsanctioned access to dangerous drugs, noting:
Despite screening our own customers by IP addresses, phone numbers, cookies and many other factors, there isn’t a cross-industry solution to identify patients attempting to obtain multiple orders of drugs, with opioids being a particular example. Clearly our entire industry needs to come together to ensure we do everything possible to protect the vulnerable and utilizing Stratis’ technology can help us achieve that.
This is a great example of blockchain being deployed where its unique qualities will make a real difference. Using traditional IT solutions to solve this issue would require a significant expense and would undoubtedly be administered by a third-party organization. With blockchain, the industry can cooperate on the critical issue of patient safety using a shared version of the truth.
UK Meds delivers over 3,000 prescriptions to customers every day. The online pharmacy lets patients select a particular treatment, after which they are asked to select medication and prescription doses for their particular illness. They then take a medical questionnaire that probes their medical history that must be approved by a GMC-registered doctor. A rejection prevents the customer from placing orders.
Stratis also plans to use the blockchain smart contracts to improve UK Meds internal supply chain to authenticate prescriptions and track their movement across the supply chain.
Stratis CEO Chris Trew wants the platform to become the go-to standard for the British pharmaceutical industry, saying:
The Stratis Platform provides a highly secure blockchain solution that can be shared across the industry to provide a trusted and verifiable record of patient requests for medicine. We are initiating this programme, and we have over 10 online pharmacies onboard already. It’s our ambition for this to become the de facto standard across the entire UK industry.
The past few months have seen the Stratis project focusing mainly on the development of their platform, though some business growth plans have come to light.
Last week, they announced that the Stratis ICO platform would be available on Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace. Progress this year has included the release of the Breeze mainnet privacy protocol, an identity app on iOS and the ICO platform, among many other achievements.
