Meditect

A pan-European decentralized network for the traceability and authenticity of medicines

Unbeknownst to the general public, the trafficking of falsified medicines is a growing scourge that kills hundreds of thousands of patients each year. It also represents a financial shortfall of c. $200 billion for the global pharmaceutical industry. This is a ubiquitous public health issue in developing countries, where most medicines are imported, and up to two thirds of medicines are bought on the street.

Concurrently, the European online market is flooded by re-imported medicines. Indeed, corrupted African distributors who benefit from low prices divert the batches from the African market to the online European market, where they illegally sell counterfeit and outdated authentic medicines at a higher price. This happens mostly online, as 96% of online pharmacies are operating without legal certifications from outside the E.U.

Meditect is a French start-up founded in 2017 that has developed an all-encompassing traceability and authentication solution to fight this lethal plague, by leveraging blockchain technology. It provides innovative services to the main actors of the pharmaceutical ecosystem: patients, pharmacists and European pharmaceutical manufacturers.

This solution enables pharmaceutical companies and public authorities to monitor the distribution of medicines in Africa. With its proprietary system, Meditect allows medicines’ authentication for patients and pharmacists through free, blockchain-based mobile applications.

In order to function, Meditect requires European pharmaceutical companies to serialize their medicines exported to Africa: this consists of affixing a unique serial number on each package. The blockchain technology adds safety, immutability and robustness to the solution. These features are necessary to ensure the effectiveness and reliability of the offering.

Meditect’s focal goal is thus to strengthen the legal distribution of European medicines to stop the flow of medicines that are re-imported on the continent by fraudulent African distributors. Its vision is to build the largest decentralized European network relying on blockchain, at the service of global health.