 At this point, I would like to transition to our first panel, which I will be moderating and hosting. So if we can bring the other panelists up on the screen, if they're all with us, yep, very good. So let me start out by making some introductions. With us is Paolo Migliari, who's the Connected Channel Lead for Merck, Sharp, and Doma. Daniel Lavric, who is head of SAP and IT Solutions for Zoolog Pharmaceutical. And Lydia Prozek, who's the Business Development Manager for Pharma and Smart Digital Innovation with Antares Vision Group and Managing Director of Tradeticity. So thank you, all three of you, for joining us. Really, I wanted to make sure that we had a chance to talk about one of the most important applications of blockchain technology, which is not just supply chains, but supply chains specifically in the pharmaceutical sector. I mean, we've heard about use of supply chains during this pandemic for PPE supplies, for sharing data sets, and those sorts of things, and vaccine passports. But there's this one category of the supply chain that is under particular stress right now. And the global supply, which is the global supply chain for COVID vaccines, with USAID and the WHO committing to distribute 2 billion vaccines through their COVAX network. And just yesterday, the US announced that they would be buying 500 million doses of vaccines to send to the rest of the world. But many of these vaccines need to be stored continuously at very cold temperatures, which will not be easy to do. And the opportunity for fraudulent vaccines to enter the market seems vast, with so many different government and non-government actors participating in this chain. So really what I want to explore with this panel is, can distributed ledger be effective in helping us track, trace, and ensure the safety of the global vaccine supply chain? And how quickly can we deploy this? Is it being deployed now? What are the benefits, or is this just a hammer trying to find a nail? So with that, let me take a breath and ask each of our panelists to take a few minutes to introduce themselves and talk about what their organizations have been doing in this space. So why don't I start actually with Lydia? OK, hello, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I'm really happy to be here in front of Antares Vision and Brian. We really want a lot of eggs and a lot of chicks. And we even want a friend of ducks and turkeys. So that's why we are here. And that's why we participate in all the initiatives, because we do believe in a blockchain. We do believe in open source technology and the cooperation. So before we go together with the other colleagues here into the details, just a few words about Antares Vision. So Antares Vision is the Italian company starting from Italy, but it's a global company with global presence working mainly with the pharmaceutical industry. However, with all other industries like food and the other industries, we lead the complete process in protecting products throughout the life cycle. In the most comprehensive solution in, as we said, track and trace in inspection and data management. So on that behalf, we cover really end-to-end track and trace by all means from the machines of the production to the software solutions. So there you go. We have a lot to say regarding the protection of the products, in particular in pharmaceutical environment, primarily with the background of serialization. However, now we are entering blockchain discussion. So I mean, I don't want to go any further at this moment, but we'll be more chance to say a few more words. Thank you, Lydia. Daniel, can you tell us more about what Zoolog Pharma is doing with blockchain technology? Oh, yeah, I'd be happy to. It's great to be on the panel. And yeah, good afternoon, morning to everybody who's joining. Zoolog Pharma itself is one of the largest health care services groups in Asia. We basically provide world-class distribution, digital commercial services to support health care needs in the region. Traditionally, we're quite a traditional company, 100 years old. But what we have been doing is, and what we do in the region is we service a lot of the big pharma clients. So basically, we have a large coverage in a lot of the markets that we're in. The majority of vaccines come through us in this region. And obviously, we play a huge part or a major part in COVID vaccines at this moment in time. We've been dabbling in blockchain for really more, around about three and a bit years, working very closely with Paolo actually on some projects with MSD. And what we're doing there is really to try and empower patients to have a window or an application that can allow them to verify the authenticity of a drug before they take it. It's a huge problem in Asia. The amount of counterfeits that we see in Southeast Asia and Asia in general is anywhere between 10% and 30%. And it's got a big impact on people's lives in this region. So really trying to use the technology that we have at our fingertips or at our disposal to make people's lives better and actually try and save lives. So great to be here. Great, thanks. Paolo, why don't you go next? And Paolo, also since you've been involved with Pharma Ledger, I would love to understand both what you do at Merck around this topic, but also if you could tell us more about Pharma Ledger and the path that it's taking. Yeah. OK, first of all, hello to everybody. I'm Paolo Migliari. I'm from MSD. I mean, MSD in Europe, Merck, as in USA, OK? It's one of the leading pharmaceutical companies. We are active in the oncology, vaccine, infection disease, COVID-19, cardiometabolic disease, and also we have also a division that is animal health, OK? I would say that we are quite big and we are really global. We are almost 74,000 employees. But the most important thing that we are using something like 14,000 billion research in development, mainly on the pharmacy. And also we have something like 3 billion of project in the real, in the infantry approach, OK? And I was really to introduce that because blockchain is becoming one of the main topic that we are really thinking to do. In my work, I'm leading the connected channel. So the idea of having connected channel is because we believe that, first of all, blockchain is a team sport. So it means that we need to really to approach, always maintaining the right level of competition with all the other, because the competition is one that is most important, OK? We believe there is some area that need to have a much more collaboration, especially when you are going to really create an environment that helps the other, OK? So that is our approach. In doing that, we are working to, and then, maybe I can be more precise in that. We are thinking into that direction, OK? One is using the right technology, open technology. We want to really reduce the barrier to the adoption. So we believe that the open technology is the most important thing to do that, OK? And the other one is really create the ecosystem. And for us, create the ecosystem means create collaboration in different player of the more than the supply chain. I would say that is the value chain, OK? That brings for us the product to the end user. The end user for us is patient and also doctor or also clinic, OK? So we believe that the blockchain, it becomes something that sort of think is as a, I would say, as a digital highway, which everybody can have the ability and the possibility to plug it in very easily, OK? So that is our approach in which they can share data and information in a trusted way and also in a very controlled way. That is our idea. So in order to do that, we have done a lot of project, internal project, POC at the moment. And then we have started collaboration in Pharma Ledger. Pharma Ledger is a big consortium of 29 partners, OK? It's under the European community. It's a project that will last three years, OK? With an investment public and private of 21 million, OK? And we are really leveraging the use of the blockchain in healthcare. I can tell you that from the pharmaceutical point of view, this is very, very important because there are something like 12 pharmaceutical companies, I mean, 12 of the first 15 pharmaceutical companies that is working with us in order to leverage this approach. So that's our idea. In theory, OK, the idea is really create a transparency, increase the speed of, I mean, transaction that helps to really to drive efficiency globally around the world. That is the reason why we are working with the Pacific with Zoolog and with the other partner. But the most important thing, I will say, that opens up often and everybody need to really have the right approach in the idea, OK? And I'll stop here because otherwise I can really continue to talk about. I don't want to minimize all the things, OK? So it sounds like right now most of the projects in this space are still very much proofs of concept. And maybe there's some pilots. What would any of the three of you consider perhaps the most advanced pilot or something that's starting to actually be in production right now? Is there any kind of points of light in here? What's the one where there seems to be the most value being created, the most promising pilot in operation right now? Using distributed ledger technology. If I say something, I mean, it's the world that we are doing with Zoolog. So we can really create, I mean, because I mean, everything started from some contrafeiting problem that you have been as a Pacific for a specific vaccine, OK? So it was really the opportunity to think and start to collaborate with other person on the field, OK? So I would say that, and maybe, I mean, really, I mean, the Daniel can help me to understand. So it's a sort of dialogue. It started like a POC involving other pharmaceutical company, OK? Because I mean, the idea is really to get this started. And now we have, I would say, it's almost in production, OK? Or at least we think that as a modular step, OK, which the blockchain is really a baseline in which you can build capability. One of the capabilities that we are starting to, we have already done was the anti-contrafitting tools that maybe I'll leave Daniel to talk about that, or maybe more deeply if you want. But on top of that, now we are really building integration with the clinic. So it's the layer of the hyper legend in this case, but I mean, because it's an open technology, OK, is helping us to build a sort of, I would say, backbone in which we can build capabilities, OK? And also increase the ecosystem, OK? And so we have also the, I mean, we are going to involve also the local government, the local authorities. And so we believe that it's become big, big, and bigger, OK? Yeah. Let me turn this to Michael then to talk a little bit more. I know you're presenting separately in-depth on the project that you're doing at Zulek Farma. But can you give us a sense of where does this first materialize? And let me frame it this way. So the moderator of the next panel is Michael Docastillo. And one night at dinner in front of a bunch of people, he turned to me and said, show me the head of lettuce. Show me the head of lettuce that was pulled off of the supermarket shelf because a blockchain somewhere said this is a bad head of lettuce, right? That we micro-targeted and discovered was on the same pallet as these other bad lettuce, and we discovered that. How do we make it real? How do we know when it's real, right? When will we see the first package of drugs that were pulled off the shelf because we realized, thanks to the use of distributed ledger technology, was probably the fault of the result of fraud or something like that. How close are we to that kind of proof point? Daniel, that was a question to you. Sorry. Apologies. We're actually there now, I would say. So we've done a lot of work with, as Paulo said, with MSD. We have live solutions in some of the markets that we're in, certainly in Hong Kong. We have a live solution there, which is doing what we hoped it would do. It's showing products, products being scanned. We're getting feedback. We're getting indications of products being in maybe locations that they weren't actually distributed to. So it's really given us a window into areas that we couldn't previously see. Again, we're also using this considerably in COVID vaccines as well. Really, just to give an added piece of verification that it's a genuine, and it's very difficult to say it's genuine, but really to say, OK, it has been through the points in the supply chain that it should go through. And what we're trying to do now is really take it to the next step is to say, OK, we can say it's a genuine product or it's being distributed through a genuine channel. But can we also add on some additional data points? Like, for instance, you mentioned COVID vaccines are very much the temperature has to be controlled very, very closely depending on which vaccine it is. So can we add that additional stamp on there to say, OK, you can scan the product. You can tell it's come through a genuine supply chain, but also it was kept under right temperature control as well. So you have an additional data point and an additional guarantee that is a good to go vaccine and you can go ahead and take it with confidence. So, yeah, we're seeing, as you mentioned, it started a little bit slowly in this region and we're starting to really gain momentum. I think COVID has obviously accelerated because there's a lot of concern that we would see, especially in Asia, kind of vaccines coming into the supply chain at various points. And so we start to see the adoption growing in that area. But yeah, we are not in a situation where it's a pilot. You could call it a live production proving, if you like, because it is actually live. There's real people downloading the app and scanning the products. And so we've gone past the pilot phase and it's now in the scale phase. That's great. Lydia, I want to turn to you a little bit. What are some examples of how much progress perhaps you've made at Antares Vision or through RFXL or other kinds of efforts to deploy this? OK, yeah. So we definitely did the connectors, which are blockchain agnostic. We did some pilots and the tests. So we are ready to jump in. However, to go back to the previous discussions, I mean, blockchain is such an important platform for traceability and accountability transparency. But that's not the way, I mean, we need the applications on the top of it. So these are our standard applications that we used even before with the connectors, which are transformed to join the blockchain. And here we are back to the fact that we need the critical mass. We need everybody who are participants in the process to join in order to have a complete solution. I mean, Antares itself or, I don't know, somebody else itself cannot do the solution or provide what is required and challenged these days. For example, with the COVID, we have this program that is coming in COVAX, which is a good example now, whereby we need to get together to offer what is requested. And of course we have it throughout RFXL solutions like cold chain traceability with all the events with everything which is required for the entire supply chain as well as the other things. But to go back, that's why participating in the pharma ledger through the meetings. However, this new initiative with FarmUN that we are with the Linux Foundation, we are really happy to come together with companies like America IBM and the others where we work towards the proper way of creating a critical mass and basically what I think it's key to define what we are still missing to define really the key events which we need to record in the blockchain. So we really need to work on that. Not, we don't need the serial numbers where we have in the other systems, but really to agree upon the key events that are required by all parties to provide the total solution. And hold that thought, I just want to mention to everyone we will try to get to a question or two before the end of the panel. So if you have a question, feel free to ask it in Hoppen and we'll keep an eye on that source of questions. So to pivot a little bit on that last point about key events, how much agreement is there in the industry and both the pharma companies but also the regulators and others on what events need to be part of the traceability mechanism and essentially in our speak on chain versus those things that should be off chain just you want a timestamp for them or some way to prove that that's true because the things that are on chain are easy to audit. Yes, this number appeared here, sat here and then was consumed over there and should not be valid again, right? If it's off chain, it's harder to get that integrity. So do you think there's consensus about how much goes on chain or off chain or is that still a big point of the debate? If you ask me if I'm still on, yeah, I think it's still very open discussion still. I mean, especially in pharma, as you mentioned, I mean, pharmaceutical company is very regulated environment. I mean, we can go in whole topic of QA data integrity and so on. So it's still really need, I mean, always IT and technology is much in front of QA and standards in the pharma and that we are always, I mean, my background is pharmaceutical is not ITs. We are, well, I've learned now we are always running after it. And of course we have a regulator bodies that are coming up with the standards but we will all have to come together to work towards a definition of the key events and the standards which will correspond to the expectations of the pharmaceutical companies and of ensuring data integrity throughout the processes. So it's really hard work in front of all of us. I mean, we know where we are going. We know how to get there, but we need to define, we need to have a critical mass of people together and define all together the key events. Right. For folks who might not be familiar, in this domain, one of the foundational laws was set in 2013 by something called in the United States at least, a regulation called the Drug Supply Chain Security Act in 2013, which stipulated the formation of a whole lot of reporting mechanisms. And it does come into force. It's 2022, right? That it comes into force, I think, where it'll require or 23. Yeah. Okay, 23, right. It will require reporting and traceability down to the individual retail package, if I understand this correctly, which is huge and tremendous. Let me ask the panel and maybe I'll look at Paolo a little bit too, in particular, on this question. Do you think it takes regulations like that or similar ones in Europe that have emerged to get this industry, to think about data sharing and safety and maybe the use of blockchain technology? Or do you think there are other benefits that can come through the use of these technologies? Just wondering about the relative role of the regulators in encouraging people to consider blockchain technology. Yeah, as Lisa was saying, I mean, technology, especially in the healthcare, is really most advanced if you think of what we can really achieve because it is very, really great environment. And if you think of this type of event, legislation event, also unfortunately COVID event, unfortunately for what is happening, but in some ways, is a sort of accelerating thing that is happening, is of course something that can help. As Lidia was saying, I mean, without having an ecosystem, especially in the pharma, we cannot do anything. People that cannot move the law. So the ecosystem is one of the most important things. And this can be stimulated by legislation. Or, but unfortunately I went like COVID, we all together need to understand how, which is the best way of implementing solution to be open and to help the people at the end of the day. So I believe that this event will help a lot. Think of the FMD in Europe. So the same approach of anti-contact fitting in Europe. And that really was a really push of the serialization of the product that is one of the most important without having serialization in theory, we cannot use the blockchain because we are building the digital twin of the product. So we can really build and be able tokenization or without tokenization, and it is something that we need to really understand. It is a link to the transparency and the fact that to have the data of chain of chain is really a big topic, okay? That need to be understood. And I believe that need to be negotiated also with the authority. We as pharmaceutical company, and I'm talking with all the people of pharmaceutical companies working together with Pharma ledger, we are open to share the data, okay? Then we need to understand that maybe if you are going to have the code of the product on chain and everybody can look at it, it can also create an opportunity for the anti-contact fitting, okay? So you need to find out the right balance in order to make this happen. In our approach, I mean, the idea of being and sharing data on chain, it's something that we evaluated and we would like to open the data, okay? But it's also the environment need to be understood that maybe with the right regulation and the right rules that maybe the blockchain, whatever it is, will help us to do, okay? Because think of the fact that at the end of the day, the patient that at the end can decide to share the data with the pharmaceutical company or maybe all the player knows where the data and how this is used. And you can also maybe decide of really stop the data on trying to understand and give specific, I mean, approaches specific data to be used for specific topic, okay? So it becomes, it opens a completely great point. And for pharmaceutical company, we are keen and open to do that. And we are pushing also the boundary of the regulator in order to make this happen, okay? Yeah, that's great to hear. Are there any observations from Daniel or Lee on this question as well? Yeah, I think it's a good point. In Asia, there's the serialization mandate is not there yet. So it does make being able to have a blockchain solution that little bit harder. So there's nothing like you have maybe in the US or that's coming in Europe. There's only a career where they actually do have serialization in place. So it does mean that we kind of tend to have to do separate steps to maybe kind of pseudo serialized products coming in. So it allows us to have that level of granularity that gives an assurance to a patient that the product is not just kind of a bark or that anybody could basically go in and come with it. But yeah, that has been the major hurdle that we've had to overcome in this region. And having maybe a consolidated approach by somebody like ASEAN to kind of push that mandate would then make the adoption far easier and the acceleration of what we're trying to do here. Yeah, if I may add something on top of that, the ecosystem becomes again, something that is important, OK? I mean, in our approach with the Hong Kong government, even if there is not a serialized environment, we came to the government and show that the serialization could be good, OK? So we have one product in the market that is serialized, the one that is God was in line that we are doing the pilot. So it's becoming also more and more important for a pharmaceutical company to go in the voluntary serialization. So we are starting to involve the other government to show what are the advantages of that. So that is the power of the ecosystem, OK? And especially when you are doing something that is recognized to be an advantage for everyone, OK? Like open software, serialization, managing the data in the right way, having the data privacy in the right way. So all these things, if managing the right way, will help to really to create the adoption of the blockchain. OK. What do any of you consider kind of some remaining outstanding technical hurdles to the adoption of blockchain technology by the pharma industry? Are there specific advancements in data confidentiality and performance or other things that seem essential to solve before we can we can apply it to the scale of the challenge? In general, I would say that the scalability for us is still a question mark, not because we don't know that, but we haven't yet tried, OK? So in theory, on the paper, everything is OK. So we need really to try and understand scalability and also to, I mean, for at the moment, we are looking at the private blockchain, OK? At the moment, especially in this sort of type of transaction where they are transaction intensive, OK? So we are thinking of trying to understand what is there. And also the effect of having the analytics on top of the blockchain becomes something that is very important. I mean, transaction without analytics, we have the ability to understand what is the data. It's nothing, OK? So it's really exciting. So the other thing in which we need to understand the balance between off-chain, on-chain, and the ability to have a specific to analytic tools that can be shared with the security, OK? It's are the three topics of security, analytics, and scalability at the moment are the three topics that we are really looking at very, we look at attention. Because as soon as we are going to create the adoption, we would like to avoid to be stopping in the middle, OK? Yeah. Any other viewpoints on remaining technical hurdles or challenges? Yeah, I just wanted to add, I mean, I agree with Paolo. And since we are dealing with digestion of data, analytics, and exchange of data anyhow with the foreign patients or hospitals or doctors, so that is the part of it. But again, just to repeat the thought that is going through the conversation all the way through, we need the critical mass and the key events. Because without that, we have such a forest or unbelievable amount of different options and the blockchains and definitions and so on, so on. So if we don't come together and define all these things, we will have a lot of technical hurdles, which will be actually structural hurdles. In my point, we really need to concentrate on that one first. And then the other one, because technology is always advanced. I mean, technology will sort it out once we have a form and we have a proper definition of what exactly we are doing to the points. That's great. Well, all three of you are pioneers in this space. I think we're all very lucky to have you on that case figuring out how to use blockchain technology to help harden and update the supply chain for what could not be one of the most critical pieces of both fighting the pandemic, but also helping us lead to a safer society. So I want to thank all three of you. And yeah, this is a really educational and fun conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here. Thank you. Thanks so much.