Meditect

Each year, according to the World Health Organization, one million people die because of falsified medicines. The traffic of counterfeit medicines represents a financial shortfall of c. $200 billion for the global pharmaceutical industry. This is particularly challenging in developing countries where most medicines are imported and up to 2/3 of medicines are bought on the street. Meditect leverages blockchain to fight this global public health issue. The Meditect solution enables pharmaceutical companies to track the distribution of their products in Africa. It sets up a system to verify the authenticity of medicines for patients and healthcare professionals by using a free mobile application or a webapp. Meditect’s vision is to strengthen the legal market of medicines, accelerate the growth of pharmacies in Africa and enhance care.

Medicines are the most counterfeit goods in the world, killing more than 1 million people each year. In developing countries, the lack of infrastructure and poor health systems make the fight against this endemic issue impossible.

Africa is deeply impacted by this scourge, in some countries such as Ivory Coast, the World Health Organization estimates that 30% of the medicines distributed are counterfeit and up to 2/3 of the medicines are purchased on the street. Moreover, the ratio of pharmacies for patient is 1/29,000, which further weakens even more the access to quality medicines even more. Meditect’s challenge is to fight this scourge on a large scale: to enable access to quality medicines, as well as affordable and effective health services.

By partnering with local actors in Ivory Coast, Benin and Guinea Conakry (pharmacists, health authorities, etc.), Meditect has been designing its solution to match the specific needs of the population. In Ivory Coast, the Ministry of Health warned us about how serious patients' misuses are in the country. By organizing working groups among them and the Order of the Pharmacists, we identified the need to educate the patients on how to take their medicines better, and how to prevent themselves from being sick again. For example, when scanning an anti-malaria medicine, the patient has access to a series of pictograms showing him pictures of mosquitos and how to avoid being bitten. 

 Another main issue impacts the region: batch diversions. Some authentic medicines are sometimes diverted on street markets where they can be sold by the unit (and not by the box), but this affects their conditions of storage. To counter this issue, Meditect has developed, with national telecom companies, rewards in the form of mobile internet data for each box bought and scanned in a pharmacy, in order to incentivize patients to remain in the legal circuit.

Meditect is a solution that ensures the authenticity and the traceability of medicines in developing countries, while strengthening and securing their legal distribution thanks to blockchain technology. It is made up of a dashboard for pharmaceuticals companies and free applications (mobile app, dashboard) available for pharmacists and patients. When the pharmaceutical company produces a medicine, a unique serial number is affixed on the box. This number is then aggregated into the Meditect blockchain.

The pharmaceutical company has access to a dashboard to analyse medicines’ traceability and distribution. Thus, the pharmacist is able to authenticate and certificate his medicines inventory via a dashboard on a free webapp and mobile app available on smartphones.  Ultimately, the patient buys a medicine and verifies its authenticity in less than 10 seconds via a webapp or a mobile app also available for free on smartphones. Scanning the datamatrix on the medicine’s package guarantees reliable information and Meditect rewards patients by offering them Internet data each time they scan an authentic box bought in a pharmacy. Additionally, the Meditect application provides useful information regarding the medicine and personalized advices according to the patients’ treatment.

The innovative nature of the Meditect solution lies in its use of the blockchain technology to store serial numbers in a robust, unforgeable and immutable way (unlike classic databases). Each of our clients (pharmaceutical companies) act as a node in the Meditect blockchain. 

The Meditect solution is universal and compatible with all existing serialization software. Its implementation is simple and does not require any additional industrial investment unlike peel/scratch-off codes solutions, which makes it highly competitive in terms of price.  

The Meditect applications have been developed to fit the specific characteristics of the African market, they can run on past versions of Android and iOS as well as smartphones that don’t perform very well (dating back to 2008). 

Each time a box of medicine is produced, the pharmaceutical companies serialize it via a unique identifier (datamatrix). The serial numbers are simultaneously sent to our database (via Meditect) and our blockchain (directly without third-party). Within the laboratory, Meditect develops a protocol allowing the aggregation of information into the blockchain without a trusted third-party. Meditect uses a private blockchain with a Proof-of-Authority network. The authenticity of each box of medicines is “engraved” in the blockchain through the supply chain and is available for all actors involved, thus ensuring a complete access to the boxes’ tracking history. This technology enables the instant verification of the medicine’s authenticity via a scan with our mobile apps.

When someone scans a datamatrix, the mobile phone identifies the serial number and requests the database if it effectively exists. With no regards to the answer, the database is then able to “ask” the blockchain if this number has also been entered by the pharmaceutical company directly through a cryptographic protocol and without any third-party. This “hybrid system” increases the security of our solution to a unique level.

Nowadays, according to a survey led by a major French pharmaceutical company, more than 70% of the population in Western Africa is aware of the danger of counterfeit medicines, a matter of death and life.

Thus, this population is willing to know how to use our solution to save their lives. Our solution is accessible and efficient: it empowers the citizens to verify the authenticity of their medicines thanks to their mobiles, the use of which being commonly wide spread. Today, in French speaking African countries, according to telecoms regulators, subscriptions for mobile broadband services more than doubled between 2015 and 2018. Additionally our applications are totally free for patients and health professionals. As a consequence, people get a simple access to a costless solution with the most trustable information. 

Consuming authentic medicines is now a daily reality thanks to a quick check with the application. The patients themselves will solve the problem of counterfeit medicines, through our active presence. They either need concrete explanations or rewards such as free Internet access.

During the summer of 2018, we ran a proof of concept in Burkina Faso with both patients and health professionals who consume medicines in the legal market. They appreciated our rewards program included in the system we have been developing. The number of users increased day after day. They said they felt confident and enjoyed the service.

• Currently we are aiming at 2000 patients using our application and 100 Meditect partner pharmacies in Abidjan with an average of 20 patients using Meditect. For now, we are limiting our growth (to this number of users), to have details on a specific population and to see how the product is implemented. 

• In one year, the goal is to be implemented in most pharmacies in Abidjan. There are 500 pharmacies and we target 100 patients per pharmacy. Thus, we aim to reach 50,000 users in a year.

• For the next 5 years, we will expand in other countries. In January 2021, 4 new countries and in January 2022; 4 additional countries. This type of service is growing exponentially, so in 5 years we are targeting 4 million users.

Our objectives are divided into 3 parts: 

• reaching the right number of people, 
• expanding our solution to new countries, and 
• increasing the number of medicines that one can authenticate.

Currently, the number 1 medicine in West Africa (“Efferalgan”), according to IMS Health (IQVIA) can be scanned thanks to our partnership with UPSA. Next year, the objective is to be able to scan all the medicines that belong to the list of essential medicines according to the WHO, and even more medicines in 5 years.

In order to maintain our first-mover advantage in our target region, we need both users and clients. We have thought of some potentials barriers and major points for the next five years: 

• Political regulation: the ability to be approved by the health authority and the regulations in place in the country. 
• A low adoption of the Meditect patient app would be a major barrier to our development.
• Signing a number of major pharmaceutical companies is also critical to deter new entrants.

• A low adoption of the Meditect patient app would be a major barrier to our development. In order to overcome that barrier and ensure a high user adoption, Meditect has developed a rewards system incentivizing patients to download and use the app. For each scan of an authentic medicine in one of Meditect’s partner pharmacy, each patient will receive 250 megabytes of Internet access. 

• Signing a number of major pharmaceutical companies is also critical to deter new entrants. We aim at offering a certain exhaustivity of medicines that can be scanned with our app so that new competitors are inapt to challenge Meditect in its market. We believe this barrier can be achieved with three blockbusters: Doliprane (Sanofi), Efferalgan (UPSA) and Coartem (Sandoz). We have already signed a contract for one of these three blockbusters and are in talks with the two other pharmaceuticals companies.

• Political regulation can be solved by partnering with European pharmaceutical companies in order to deploy more efficiently the solution and get the approval of local authorities. 

Meditect hired 9 full-time employees and 2 contractors, one consultant and a freelance developper. 

Meditect was co-founded by Arnaud Pourredon (CEO) and Romain Renard (CFO) and Sasha Servan-Schreiber. The co-founders’ backgrounds are highly complementary: Arnaud has studied Medicine and Pharmacy and has experience on the field in Africa, while Romain, who graduated from Sciences Po Paris, has a strong knowledge in finance and business organization. Finally Sasha is currently doing his PhD at MIT working on applied cryptography, privacy preserving technology, and data science. He handled the native development of the project. 

Our tech team is made of Matthieu, who brings experience to Meditect as he has been working for over 10 years: after a PhD in biomedical engineering, he taught himself how to code and founded two startups. The other developer, Maxime, studied in one of the most prestigious tech schools in Paris (Ecole 42). 

Commercial prospection is handled by 2 business developers. Clarissa is a graduate pharmacist who brings industry and product knowledge, while Charles has already proven his skills by working at a Dutch startup for 2 years. 

The strength of our team lies in the diversity of fields that we cover: pharmacy, business, finance, medicine, and engineering. We are a young, dynamic team from different backgrounds, working together towards an objective in which we firmly believe: the fight against counterfeit medicines. This complementarity brings out innovative and unique solutions to develop our project. 

3 partnerships : 

• UPSA – Pharmaceutical Company: as part of the implementation of a pilot project in Ivory Coast, Meditect apps will initially be used to trace and authenticate the most widely consumed UPSA medicines in West Africa, according to IMS Health (IQVIA).

• ISPED (research): epidemiological study on the impact of Meditect on the trafficking of counterfeit medicines in Abidjan (14 months)

• PwC: LetsgoFrance – business collaboration

We are targeting the market of medicines produced in Europe and exported to West Africa. In the medium term, we are targeting the entire African market, and in the long term the Southeast Asian market. Our interactions with these laboratories are led with the most relevant contacts such as serialization managers, managers of the African division and anti-counterfeiting managers.

The business model is pay-per-box. We also charge a deployment fee to cover our tailor-made operations for each client. This fee includes various key expenses such as clients’ dashboard setups, trainings of local medical sales representatives, and communication campaigns, which are essential to ensure the local implementation of Meditect in our target market.  

We have signed a first contract with a major French pharmaceutical company for a pilot project in Ivory Coast that will later expand to Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania.

By securing more boxes of medicines, we ensure more revenue. In French-speaking Africa, 400 million boxes of medicines are consumed. On the long run, we might expect to secure 400 million which represents a revenue of $[30-50]million expected. 

We are applying to Solve to get visibility among industrial actors of public health development and potential partners, as well as recognition and credibility from pharmacists and industrials. Funding is also important to increase our growth in order to allow us to keep expanding in other countries. Gaining visibility on American soil would be an advantage for us, as starting discussions with American pharmaceutical companies is a major commercial objective for us.
Finally, we would be interested in promoting our code, which is under MIT license, to MIT students (or anyone), to exchange about its design.

Meditect wishes to partner with several major mobile operators in West Africa (Orange, Moov, MTN)  to provide Internet data via the Meditect application in the first year (pilot project) for each scan of an authentic medicine. Our will is to encourage patients and pharmacists to use the application. In the following years, our objective is to integrate the telephone operators’ Money services into the Meditect application to facilitate users’ transactions and establish a fruitful, long-lasting partnership.

There are two main added values that this collaboration entails for the telecom companies. 

--> The first one is the positive communication around the initiative, showing that they are associated with a project that is committed and responsible in the fight against counterfeit medicines. 

--> The second added value for the operators is the integration of the payment system to Meditect. It would increase their revenues via the Meditect mobile app, help them acquire additional subscribers, and of course strengthen their local presence in the countries where Meditect is implanted.

The pharmaceutical industry moves very slowly. A lot of time is necessary to build strong relationship with these companies. As a start-up in this context, we are looking for more visibility and the help of people that have the means to speed things up. These people include former and current executives, as well as organisation with a strong footprint in West Africa.