Blockchain may hold the key to drug pricing transparency in the US

Prescription drug costs have been a controversial topic for US patients, doctors and the government for many years, but now, product design and development firm Cambridge Consultants may offer a solution based on blockchain making them transparent.

The open market trading platform for drug prices negotiation will be deployed on the Etherum blockchain, meaning that the trading of drug products will be possible in the same fashion as that of commodities.

“Drug pricing in the US healthcare system is broken because of the way the market is set up,” said Jaquie Finn, head of Digital Health, Cambridge Consultants. “By moving to an open market that creates price competition and improves access, there is an enormous opportunity to fix it, providing the right technology is in place.”

There has been a slew of news stories on inflated drug prices with notable cases including that of Mylan — which increased the price of EpiPen after it obtained the rights to sell it — and of course, that of Martin Shkreli who raised the price of an old drug by 5,000% overnight.

“Blockchain is best known as the key innovation behind digital currencies, but the opportunity is to use it to build a trust fabric in any industry that requires the linking of large volumes of dynamic data, whilst maintaining traceability — including in healthcare,” Finn continued, “we’ve done the hard part: adapting blockchain’s design and use case to address a significant problem in the healthcare industry. Now there is a practical new direction for the market, in order to address the problem of drug pricing in America.”