In this new series “Hybrid Product Ideas with Qliktag” we share some interesting ideas and examples of ordinary physical products and assets and address how their value can be enhanced by tokenizing and digitally augmenting them through the use of printed electronic tags.
Today, we look into personalized medicine.
Personalized medicine and customized delivery of drugs and medical treatments is rapidly gaining ground within the medical, healthcare and pharmaceutical world. Rather than prescribing generic drugs and treatments, the practice of personalizing treatment decisions, medicine components and dosage specifically for an individual patients medical profile, specific condition, body type, reactions and individual traits is advancing healthcare. With personalized medicine products / doses that are linked to specific patients and their attributes, comes unique challenges some of which can be addressed through tokenization of doses, linking physical medicine doses to specific patients digitally, safety and security through NFC and traceability and accountability maintained on the blockchain with NFT tokens.
Let’s imagine a personalized glass vial container with a cancer drug customized with components and dosage for treatment for a specific patient. Unlike generic drugs, this is formulated for a particular patient and may not be safe for other patients. Ensuring accountability, delivery to the right person, being able to authenticate the dose, confirm it is in the custody of the right person and maintain an immutable traceability record all become important factors. Similarly, communicating the right dosage, customized instructions to specific patients for specific doses also become relevant.
Now, picture the glass vial container with the same personalized drug with a printed electronic / NFC tag embedded into container so a patient can tap the NFC chip, authenticate the drug, verify without doubt it was formulated for them, use the same technology to reorder future doses, report effects and progress, access dose administration instructions, receive reminder notifications when it is time to take a dose and more.
The medicine equipped with a Qliktag NFC chip can be digitally augmented with:
- Digital authentication of the medicine / dose through the use of secure, unclonable & verifiable NFC within the individual packaging which uses changing encrypted keys to ensure the authenticity of the medicine prevention of counterfeiting, preventing mix ups which is critical to safety.
- An immutable record of who this medicine dose is authorised for use can be maintained on the blockchain by pairing the dose with an NFT token. This token can be used to verify the patient, unlock features to re-order further doses of the same personalized treatment, unlock ways for the patient to submit feedback and treat progress back and gate certain features or content which should be exclusively for the authorised patient.
- Personalized dosage, component / ingredient lists, allergy warnings, instructions for administering the medicine, treatment instructions based on the individuals medical assessment.
- Push notifications to remind the patient to administer a dose of the medicine or updates on expiry or changes to treatment instructions based on the medical experts assessment of how the treatment is progressing.
Tokenization and augmenting physical doses of personalized medicine with digital features can make the medicine significantly more valuable but more importantly, safer, smarter and even more personalized.
