Merck to deal knock-offs a blockchain knockout

Merck and other pharmaceutical firms have already implemented systems aimed at preventing fakes and meds tampering, but they believe that blockchain technology will greatly improve their processes and eliminate some inefficiencies.

The patent outlines “a secure, reliable storage of the reading results with very high data integrity, such that it is essentially impossible to manipulate or erase or otherwise tamper with or lose such data, e.g. due to unintended or deliberate deletion or due to data corruption.”

Merk wants the stored information to be “accessed wherever access to the blockchain is available. This allows for a safe and distributed storage and access to the stored reading results, e.g. for integrity verification purposes such as checking whether a supplier of a product being marked with a composite security marking, as described herein, was in fact the originator of the product, or not.”