Microsoft Announces Partnership With Irish Pharmaceutical Blockchain Disruptors ServBlock

ServBlock, a blockchain and pharmaceutical compliance company, is partnering with Microsoft’s Early Access Engineering program to produce a new business case for using NFT technology to meet compliance standards.

Servblock translates the current human-to-human quality assurance process into a digital first trust system supported by machine-to-machine interactions and blockchain technology, providing verified data that is automatically checked for compliance.

Pharmaceutical compliance involves a multitude of processes that require manual control of data and tasks that require detailed attention, passing many levels of scrutiny often multiple times. ServBlock automates this process in a much more secure, timely and cost-effective way than the current status quo using blockchain technology.

The use of blockchain helps create validated digital traceability systems for pharmaceutical parts by recording data in real time throughout a supply chain. With blockchain solutions, pharmaceutical-based transactions and processes can become secure, cheaper and faster than usual. For the start-up of new biotechnology plant projects, ServBlock can save 14,400 commissioning hours, resulting in an average saving of 1.5 million euros per project.

In addition to cost reduction, ServBlock’s technology:

• Eliminates fraud in the pharmaceutical supply chain

• Eliminates the risk of counterfeit or contaminated drugs entering the market

• Significantly reduces human error in the supply chain.

Blockchain is best known for its applications in the financial industry and has been particularly entrenched in cryptocurrency over the past decade, but its fundamental data integrity properties mean it is particularly suited to regulated industries, such as pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution.

In collaboration with Microsoft, ServBlock has developed a new use of NFT (non-fungible token) technology. NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and cannot be replicated, normally bought and sold. This model presents the perfect framework to ensure transparency for all stakeholders from start to finish.

John Ward, CEO and founder of ServBlock, said: “Implementing new technologies to help continue to improve compliance standards is a core pillar of what ServBlock does. Having Microsoft on board provides further validation to the work we have done since the founding of the company and blockchain as a powerful business tool. NFTs have gained recognition and popularity for their use in the sale of art and a new internet culture, but we are excited to begin adopting real-world applications in corporate environments.’

Quality assurance data is tokenized and in this way shows an end-to-end business use case for NFT use in the pharmaceutical industry. Each business process is signed by business participants, stored and then shared through a ledger that itself shows ownership of assets from its creation. Each business process is shared between business participants, ensuring traceability at each stop.

Small, Medium & Corporate Lead for Microsoft Ireland, Peter Lougheed said: “NFTs are one of the most exciting concepts to emerge from blockchain technology and have grown to be hugely significant. It’s great to see a Microsoft Founders Hub member, like ServBlock, continue to scale and expand. We at Microsoft are excited to work with ServBlock to develop their technology to better enable the pharmaceutical industry to meet their often highly complex compliance standards.”

This collaboration presents the first use of NFTs within a pharmaceutical manufacturing setting and therefore reveals great potential for the use of blockchain technology in a number of areas that rely heavily on secure, transparent ownership of assets.