Patrick Curry joins MediConnect as adviser to the Board

Nottingham, United Kingdom. 28th March 2019 – MediConnect, the blockchain solution for tracing and sharing data across the medication supply chain, is pleased to announce that Patrick Curry, CEO of the British Business Federation Authority (BBFA), has joined the company as an adviser to the Board. He brings extensive experience of deploying technological solutions to build secure collaboration between governments, industry bodies and private companies.

Awarded an OBE by HM The Queen for services to international collaboration, Curry has over 20 years’ experience of developing policies and standards. He is CEO of BBFA, a governance body seeking to build collaborative, digital trust mechanisms across industries, and co-authored the UK Government’s Lord Holmes Report in 2018: “Distributed Ledger Technologies for Public Good: Leadership, Collaboration and Innovation”. At BBFA, he is tasked with overseeing working groups to implement the findings of this report, namely working collaboratively to implement new secure, private technologies such as blockchains. This includes the Prescription Drug Addiction Working Group, which has signed up MediConnect as a member and invited contributions from all the major regulators.

MediConnect is a blockchain solution designed to track medication all the way through the supply chain from the point at which it is manufactured to its prescription by medical professionals and purchase by patients. At a time when 200,000 Brits are said to be chronic users of prescription painkillers (Evening Standard: 2018), it provides a blockchain solution to share information securely between companies, pharmacies, hospitals and health organisations. This will perform the following functions:

• Prevent the misuse and overprescribing of prescription drugs
• Provide information to assist health practitioners in preventing and tackling drug addiction
• Establish drug provenance and traceability through all parts of the supply chain
• Streamline the drug recall process, reducing health risk and cost

MediConnect has agreed a five-year contract with the Addiction Safeguarding Committee Organisation (ASC), under which the organisation will exclusively use its blockchain solution and all ASC members will be integrated into the platform. Two online pharmacies, UK Meds and Tower Health & Pharmacy, have already signed up to integrate MediConnect’s solution upon conclusion of the company’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO). A comprehensive pilot scheme is also planned with eight to ten local private and NHS pharmacies set to trial the solution, which will enable 360,000 patients to store their records securely on the MediConnect blockchain, processing 50,000 transactions every month.

The MediConnect blockchain is being built by Stratis Group as a bespoke solution based on the Stratis blockchain. MediConnect has launched its own MEDI Token to handle transactions and transfer value on its platform. The ICO of the MEDI Token is currently live and is expected to conclude in H1 2019.

Dexter Blackstock, CEO of MediConnect, comments: “We are delighted to receive the support of such an influential and well-connected adviser as Patrick. As head of the BBFA, Patrick specialises in seeing the value of technologies that can work between companies, industry bodies and governments. His support is therefore a highly significant endorsement of our solution and will help us onboard even more pharmacies and prescribers. By centrally tracing the medical supply chain and preventing the oversubscription of prescription drugs, MediConnect will protect the health of patients and save the NHS millions of pounds.”