The Chinese are increasingly grappling with a food and drug safety crisis that has plagued the industrial power for some time now. The latest scandal to hit the Chinese health sector is a fake rabies baby vaccine that was recently released. Top technology experts in the country are of the opinion that the blockchain could play a key role in solving these problems that are brought about by a gap in transparency in the country’s food and drug’s sectors. The rabies scandal involved Changsheng Biotechnology who were found to have forged documentation relating to a rabies baby vaccine. Changsheng technology product inspection records as well.
These sweeping indictments of Changsheng biotechnology have led to its management being placed under investigation by the China Food and drug administration as well as the police. In light of all this, Chinese blockchain entrepreneurs such as the country’s biggest Bitcoin millionaire LI Xiaolai, have decided to step up and take the debate to the national stage. These crypto personalities are serious in their call to have a disruption in the pharmaceutical industry through the adoption of distributed ledger technology I order to restore the general public’s faith in the Chinese health care system. According to Li Xiaolai, if the whole vaccine supply chain had instead used a token-free blockchain solution while recording, then most of the problems the industry is currently grappling with would have been averted.
If the Chinese health care sector heeded to his words, it wouldn’t be the first time crypto foray into the supply chain. A number of block chain initiatives have delved into the supply chain management with the aim of streamlining the process and making it transparent. In china’s case, if the Changsheng biotechnology delved into technology, it could potentially be very risky. This is because the pharmaceutical company behind the latest medical scandal would still be able to deceive customers and regulators.
If someone at pharmaceutical company Changsheng biotechnology decided to falsify records, the block chain would process the data as is leading to a trash in trash out scenario. This point of view was made research department Tencent who have highlighted the need to have rules that will govern the use of the block-chain system. The president of the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong, Leonhard Weese, contradicted Bitcoin millionaire Li Xiaolai, by stating that he didn’t believe the block-chain was the answer to the country’s drug and safety problem. He is of the opinion that other decentralized and transparent systems carried the solution to the industry’s woes since they are cheaper and faster and can store much more data than the block chain. The block-chain will play a huge role in supply chain disruption with projects like G-coin which target the proper tracking of the gold supply chain and also Coca-Cola’s project that seeks to put an end to forced labor.
