All of us have woken up to requests for oxygen, Remedesvir or plasma on WhatsApp for more than a month now. Volunteers, NGOs & local governments have been manually tracking and aggregating data about where these medical supplies are available. Though the efforts are commendable and have no doubt saved lives, we must recognize that they fall short of a desirable state. The challenge is that in a crisis, the situation is so dynamic that data about availability of medical supplies is most often outdated minutes after it is shared on social media. Fake data is also a problem despite attempts of volunteers to manually verify it.
In principle, arranging these medical supplies should be the responsibility of the hospitals and medical care providers. But they too are struggling with the same issue. Medical supply chains are designed to operate with regular demand and supply patterns. When demand spikes, hospitals need to adapt their supply chains to cope. They face the same issue: how to find out how much is available where – in real time? This seemingly simple data problem determines how quickly can we make medical supplies available where they are needed, when they are needed.
As scientists, epidemiologists, doctors and medical professionals work overtime to cope with the current pandemic, we must ensure that the tools needed to implement the solutions are available and robust. Since this pandemic broke, hospitals have struggled to cope with the unusually high demand in PPE kits, Oxygen, Vaccines, Remedesivir and Plasma. We must accept that this is the new normal.
Hospitals must prepare to deal with sudden surges in demand for a wide variety of their supplies. They must also recognize that in crisis scenarios, local & central governments may need to step in to arrange supplies and set quotas – to do so hospitals may be required to share data about availability & consumption data of medical supplies.
The problem is not that this data is not available: Hospitals, Retailers, Distributors and Manufacturers all maintain data about their inventories of medical supplies. The problem is that there is no way for these organizations to share data with each other in a secure, trusted environment – even if they want to do so.
This is where Blockchain as a technology holds promise. Quite simply a blockchain is a digital, secure database which can act as a shared record between multiple organizations in a medical supply chain. A blockchain based medical supply chain solution can enable real-time sharing of availability & demand information of medical supplies among Hospitals, Retailers, Distributors and Manufacturers. This information can be shared with local & central governments as and when needed. Unlike today’s scenario where we must rely on emails, pdfs, spreadsheets, phone calls and WhatsApp to share information & coordinate medical supplies, a Blockchain based solution ensures that data is
- Verifiable and therefore trusted
- Shared in real time as needed among hospitals, retailers, distributors and
- Accessible to only those organizations who are authorized to see it
Controlling access to data may seem counter productive but it is important to ensure that the private sector has control of their data. The use of Blockchain based data sharing in digital supply chains is not just a social good, it is a strategic initiative. In a time of frequent disruptions, supply chains will be as much about supply assurance as they would be about cost optimization. The speed and agility with which hospitals will be able to adapt to supply disruptions and demand spikes will be a critical factor in their success to provide medical care.Government and regulators can encourage and nudge these data sharing efforts in medical supply chain. We have a precedent in telecom: In 2018, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) created the TCCCPR regulation that outlined a blockchain network to store the telco subscriber consents for data sharing. The writing is on the wall: Medical care has to be a joint endeavor of the private and public sector – for this to succeed at scale, availability of a digital platform to share verifiable data in real time in a secure way is a fundamental need and Blockchain is a technology that can enable this.
The author is the founder and CEO of KoineArth
