In February the FDA announced it was launching a pilot project for drug supply chain participants to pilot the usage of emerging technology that helps with tracking and tracing prescription drugs. Though the project has a broad remit, they specifically mentioned blockchain technology as something they were interested in. This is a phenomenal opportunity to get engagement from a regulatory body on a nascent technology.

Over the past few weeks several projects have announced their involvement, but we didn’t have a full picture until recently. The FDA posted the list of project participants last Wednesday, and though several of the titles pilot project titles are exceedingly generic, at least 6 of them are related to blockchain technology. Here’s the blockchain projects:

Project Leads Pilot Project Title
IBM/KPMG/Merck/Walmart DSCSA Blockchain interoperability Pilot
IDLogiq IDLogiq Next Generation Advanced REAL FIPS-Compliant Cryptographic ID Authentication with Transaction Ledger Powered by Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology for Decentralized Heterogeneous Global Network Computing Environment
MediLedger MediLedger DSCSA Pilot
Rymedi DSCSA Implementation in Intra and Inter Healthcare System Medicine Transfers
TraceLink DSCSA Traceability with Distributed Ledgers and Digital Recalls Project Proposal
UCLA Health UCLA-LedgerDomain: DSCSA Solution Through Blockchain Technology

In the blockchain space some of these participants are familiar faces, and some of them are new. IBM has been beating the blockchain drum for some time now, touting their success with Walmart in the FoodTrust project as a model for other industries. KPMG has a blockchain advisory practice, and Merck has signaled their interest before.

MediLedger doesn’t come as a surprise, after all, it was founded to tackle DSCSA compliance. Similarly, Rymedi makes sense after their track and trace work elsewhere. However, the other three projects, IDLogiq, TraceLink, and UCLA Health, are all industry incumbents, but newbies to the blockchain space. It’ll be interesting to see how different organizations are approaching and applying blockchain technology.