Pharmaceutical product traceability specialist Adents has partnered with Microsoft to bring blockchain and AI technology into its new NovaTrack supply chain platform.
The company claims, in a press release, Thursday that NovaTrack, which debuted at VivaTech 2018 in Paris last month, offers end-to-end traceability and visibility throughout the entirety of the supply chain. It also said that OECD data shows an estimated 10 percent of pharmaceutical products sold worldwide and 2.5 percent of global imports are counterfeit.
Adents asserts that tighter control of supply chains is a crucial factor in tackling trust and transparency and while blockchain technology can help with supply chain security, there are still a number of major challenges, including the ability to define data governance and security policies based on industry standards, as stakeholders are reluctant to share business information. Additionally, with hundreds of billions of products circulating worldwide annually, there is a huge volume of data to process.
Adents said that NovaTrack utilizes Blockchain, AI, internet of things (IoT) and serialization functionalities to bring comprehensive visibility throughout product distribution chains and life cycles. The Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) approach allows each supply chain participant to either run blockchain nodes either on their premises or via the Cloud, which is preferable, as it simplifies technology lifecycle management, security, scalability and resource allocation.
Laurent Curny, General Manager at Microsoft Services France, said: “We are delighted to work with Adents to develop NovaTrack, which will introduce valuable new ways of addressing traceability challenges throughout supply chains owing to our advanced blockchain and AI technologies. Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform will ensure the secure international deployment of Adents NovaTrack to accelerate the fight against industrial counterfeiting.”
Christophe Devins, founder and CEO of Adents, added: “Our alliance with Microsoft to co-develop Adents NovaTrack will offer game-changing Blockchain-based unit identification for various industries around the world. Our deep roots and successes in serialization and traceability, enhanced by Microsoft Azure Cloud technology, will provide our clients total transparency, all along their supply chains, and secure product authenticity for end users.”