Modern medical professionals and healthcare experts are resorting to medical cannabis and acknowledging its wide-ranging therapeutic properties, resulting in the cannabis-based medicine industry witnessing rapid growth and development.
This essential Ayurvedic herb is highly revered for its direct, effective, and holistic action on the body for alleviating and preventing various acute, chronic, and even life-threatening health conditions. But its effective distribution and accessibility for the patients do not come without challenges.
Different states and territories worldwide have their own regulations restricting the distribution and usage of the hemp plant in various forms. Because of these variations in the law, most people have little to no knowledge and awareness about the potential of cannabis-based medicines, let alone access to the same.
Besides that, the rising recreational abuse of this herb and extensive illegal trade has further aggravated the situation. It has become difficult for many patients to trust this invaluable herb and leverage its vast health benefits without being afraid of breaching the law.
The traditional supply chain management of hemp medicine in India suffers from various inefficiencies and corruption. To eliminate these issues and allow for the safe dispensing of this invaluable herb, ventures like Hempstreet leverage the power of blockchain technology.
Understanding Blockchain
Blockchain became the buzzword after its implementation in cryptocurrency. But there is much more to it than that. It is an effective tool to issue and manage globally-accessible security in a compliant way. It applies to various industry verticals and helps make their workflow faster, cheaper, and safer.
As the name suggests, a blockchain is a chain of digital blocks containing information. It acts as a ledger (record book) of important information for organizations. Each block contains the data you put in it, its hash (a unique identity of the block), and the hash of the block before it. Since each block’s identity lies in the next block, they all form a “chain.”
Why Is It Helpful?
Industries around the world find this technology a reliable ledger for storing their vital organizational data. It is considered a secure and stable system where it becomes nearly impossible to change data once it is recorded.
Moreover, this system is decentralized in nature. This implies that rather than a single authority overseeing the chain’s function, every person in the network gets a copy of the entire blockchain and holds authority for accepting or rejecting the addition of new data or blocks.
Blockchain eliminates human error in recording information and enables medical institutions and patients alike to provide bulletproof evidence for their regulatory and legal compliance. Besides that, this technology has the following benefits for the safe dispensing of hemp medicine in India:
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Supply chain management
Businesses worldwide can easily manage different stages of their supply chain and avoid unnecessary paperwork. They can track the progress of their products’ sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution in real-time and access the past and present locations of the products in the chain. Furthermore, because of the transparency of information, it becomes easy for financial and governmental institutions to inspect the financial aspects of the organizations and ensure their legal compliance.
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Cost reduction
Be it cultivation, research facilities, logistics, or retail outlets, labor remains one of the most significant expenses for the medical cannabis industry. Blockchain can help automate the banking, payment, and financing systems and streamline the otherwise time-consuming tracking, auditing, and reporting processes. This helps businesses reduce the need for and cost of additional staff otherwise needed for overseeing these functions.
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Quality assurance
Through blockchain, people can easily access detailed information about the genetic, physical, and chemical properties of the hemp plant being used in their medicines, along with a comprehensive database of other vital information like-
- research papers
- clinical trials, and results on the medicines’ efficacy
- observations
- patient outcomes
- electronic medical records (EMRs)
As medicinal research evolves, blockchain keeps a perfect record of every phase of that project, accessible anytime to confirm a conclusion, verify a result and prevent misrepresentation. It assures medical providers of the quality and consistency of the medicines they prescribe to their patients.
Moreover, by enabling the customers to track their products from seed to sale and helping them know the quality of the medications they will consume, blockchain technology can assist the medical cannabis industry in establishing adequate quality control.
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Increased customer confidence
Patients, for a very long time, have been apprehensive about consuming hemp medicine in India because of regulatory inconsistencies. By providing clear and transparent information to the customers about what they are getting, how it is made, and where they are getting it from, blockchain increases their awareness about the invaluable medications and builds confidence in consuming it.
How Hempstreet Leverages Blockchain
Hempstreet aims to bring transparency and traceability to the supply chain of Ayurvedic cannabis-based medicines, from sourcing the raw materials to manufacturing, distributing, and prescribing. Hempstreet leverages the blockchain’s security mechanism to ensure that critical data is not tampered with, helping reinforce trust in the system. The technology helps-
- automate the validation of the medicines’ shipment and track their delivery
- protect the products’ packaging and labeling to avoid counterfeiting, secure the brand, and ensure that the patients have access only to genuine cannabis-based medicines
- secure and verify the transaction processing
- verify regulatory compliance
Hempstreet can clearly oversee the different stages of its supply chain, including hemp plant storage, sales, legal channels, etc.
The company can even track the patients’ responses to help adjust the future doses and combinations of the cannabis-based medicine and conduct future research on its efficacy. The patient’s health conditions and preexisting issues are recorded on the blockchain.
After patients are prescribed a cannabis-based medicine, they can update their health condition on the electronic health records by mentioning how the treatment has been working for them. This record helps medical experts modify the doses and prescription of medication and dispense only the amount of the medicine required.
This way, Hempstreet seeks to eliminate drug abuse, over prescription, and other malpractices in the industry while encouraging a safe and responsible distribution of this divine herb.
Real-time traceability of the prescribed Ayurvedic medicines is another prominent benefit that blockchain brings to the table. Each Hempstreet product has a QR code that the patients can scan.
This gives them rapid access to specific and accurate details of the medications’ supply chain, stored in the organization’s secure and permanent blockchain infrastructure. It includes details such as
- certificate, batch numbers, shipment date, order number, barcode, HS code, temperature, production data of the products from the suppliers, producers, and distributors
- the order, shipment, and equipment numbers from the third-party logistics services (courier, parcel, express, transshipment, etc.)
- receive and pickup dates and packaging specifications and barcodes from the retailers
- patient or customer receive date
- order number
- invoice
- customer ID
You can thus know where the herb was grown, which factory made the formulation, the warehouse where it was stored, the medical facility or Ayurvedic doctor who bought and prescribed it, and what the lab results say about the medications’ efficacy. This transparency in tracking every part of the products’ supply chain creates awareness about these medicines and increases confidence.
On this world patient safety day, let us make more people aware of the invaluable health benefits of the medical hemp plant and allow patients access to safe, effective, and quality cannabis-based medicines. Get in touch with us to know more about Hempstreet’s initiatives toward patient safety and dispensing natural, effective, and holistic healthcare.
References
https://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/17416/how-blockchain-is-disrupting-the-cannabis-industry
https://www.lucidgreen.io/blog/is-cannabis-ready-for-blockchain
https://www.solulab.com/blockchain-marijuana-cannabis-industry/
