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 Two hospitals, in central England's Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick,
are expanding their use of a distributed ledger, an offshoot of
blockchain, from tracking vaccines and chemotherapy drugs to
monitoring fridges storing COVID-19 vaccines.
The tech will bolster record-keeping and data-sharing across supply
chains, said Everyware, which monitors vaccines and other treatments
for Britain's National Health Service (NHS), and Texas-based ledger
Hedera, owned by firms including Alphabet's Google and IBM, in a
statement.
Logistical hurdles are a significant risk to the speedy distribution
of COVID-19 vaccines but have resulted in booming business for
companies selling technology for monitoring shipments from factory
freezer to shots in the arm.
Pfizer Inc and BioNTech's shot, for example, must be shipped and
stored at ultra-cold temperatures or on dry ice, and can only last
at standard fridge temperatures for up to five days.
Other vaccines, such as Moderna Inc's, do not need such cold storage
and are therefore easier to deliver.
"We can absolutely verify the data that we've collected from every
single device," Everyware's Tom Screen said in an interview. "We
make sure that data is accurate at source, and after that point we
can verify that it's never been changed, it's never been tampered
with."
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 Firms from finance to
commodities have invested millions of dollars to
develop blockchain, a digital ledger that allows
the secure and real-time recording of data, in
the hope of radical cost cuts and efficiency
gains.
Results have been mixed, though, with few
projects achieving the revolutionary impact
heralded by proponents.
Everyware's Screen said it while it would be
possible to monitor the vaccines without
blockchain, manual systems would raise the risk
of mistakes.
The system will "allow us to demonstrate our
commitment to providing safe patient care," said
Steve Clarke, electro-bio medical engineering
manager at South Warwickshire NHS in a
statement.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Hugh
Lawson)
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