January 30, 2022  — Rosalina Areola, a 4th year BS Pharmaceutical Sciences student won 2nd place in the International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation Innov8, an online competition on ideas/suggestions about the Application of Blockchain Technology in Community Pharmacy Services.

Her winning entry is entitled, “Optimization of Dangerous Drugs Prescription and Dispensing Through Block Chain Technology.” According to Areola, the project involves the application of blockchain technology to streamline the process of prescription and dispensing of dangerous drugs. It makes use of Hyperledger Fabric architecture for the transaction ledgers; although the proposal did not go as far as building the specific models nor making codes or algorithms.

Among all existing blockchain architecture, Hyperledger Fabric is the most straightforward, does not make use of cryptocurrency, has a wide scalability, and is  widely-used in the supply chain industry.

“I chose the dangerous drug sector in community pharmacy, as prescribing and dispensing dangerous drugs involve special steps that are not normally done in other prescription medicines, at least in the Philippines. Prescribers need to have a valid S2 license and they make use of special prescription pads issued by the DOH.”

While this stringent process is deemed necessary, Areola explained that it is laborious and without a system to prevent medication errors and detect fraudulent transactions. For instance, physical prescription pads are still susceptible to forgery and tampering.  Pharmacists who have partially filled prescriptions for dangerous drugs may forget to include the number of unused balances that could result in drug misuse.

The pharmacist can commit human errors like giving the wrong drug, wrong strength, or wrong amount which are very crucial as these can result to a patient’s death. The possibility of duplicate prescriptions exists with the pharmacist unable to verify a separate prescription from another doctor or issued by another pharmacy. The drug enforcement agency cannot determine this discrepancy until it receives the stored pharmacy records on dangerous drugs.

In general , Areola said the blockchain technology will automate the process of dangerous drug dispensing that will relieve the workload of pharmacists and leave time for them to perform other tasks.

PPHA 2021 Most Outstanding Pharmacists

Several members of the UPCP won the Most Outstanding Pharmacists  during the 2021 PPHA Gabi ng Parangal 2021.

They were Karen Grace Esteban-Romero, Don Leon Ma. Guerrero Award; Assoc Prof. Francis R. Capule, Outstanding Pharmacist in Research; and Paul Marvin T. Quizon, Outstanding Pharmacist in Industrial Pharmacy.

Cynthia M. Villamor