+COUNTERFEIT MEDICATIONS ARE FLOODING THE NATION'S PHARMACIES AND HOSPITALS

The drug supply in the United States is among the safest and the most controlled in the world.  But it is under a growing threat from organized and white collar criminals who push stolen, out-of-date, adulterated or fake medications.  

The drugs make their way into pharmacies, nursing homes, hospitals and doctors' offices.  Often, they are suspect because they are sold outside of the regulated supply chains.  At worst, they may be medically worthless or toxic.

Federal agents seized nearly $73 million in counterfeit drugs in 2014.  But, that is a tiny slice of the black market drug trade-which may exceed $200 billion internationally and account for 10 percent of the pharmaceuticals in the global supply chain.

A 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office estimated there are 36,000 "rogue" Internet pharmacies, many selling drugs that contain too much, too little or not active ingredients.  And some of the drugs are full of contaminants, to include heavy metals, rat poison and even toxic highway paint.

THE BLOCKCHAIN AS A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM WITH COUNTERFEIT PHARMACEUTICALS

Blockchain technology,  as a measure to improve anti-counterfeit strategies-is a scalable and tamper-proof solution which assigns every manufactured product(such as a pharmaceutical) as an asset.  Theses assets are then added to the blockchain and assigned a unique number(or "hash").

The blockchain will verify theses hashes in order to determine whether or not the item in question is legitimate or counterfeit.  Since the blockchain is transparent, any one in the world will be able to access the blockchain and conduct their own item verifications.

In regard to the change of ownership, the blockchain will provide the user absolute verification  regarding the when and who of the ownership change.  This level of blockchain verification should prevent malicious individuals or groups from creating duplicate item records.

Over 30% of all pharmaceuticals in the developing world have found to be counterfeit.  Blockchain technology in sync with the pharmaceuticals industry could prove to save millions of lives every year.