Chekkit Health Tackles the Problem of Counterfeit Drugs with a More Integrated Supply Chain
Using blockchain technology, founder Dare Odumade’s Nigerian company provides products with unique identifiers to trace their origin, movement and determine their authenticity. In addition, it enhances last-mile supply chain knowledge with AI-driven insights from consumer data, enriching brands with predictive demand analytics.
Investors, learn how you can become a Health Moonshot Champion and support Health Transformers like Dare Odumade.
The Challenge
Dare Odumade, CEO & Founder of Chekkit, was looking for a way to use his technology skills to create solutions to key problems in Nigeria, his country of origin. Previously, he started two technology companies: a social media platform at his university and then a music streaming network that eventually led to a partnership offer from Warner Music Group. However, by 2017, he was eager to start something that could impact lives in a more tangible way. He zeroed in on the problem of counterfeit drugs.
“Counterfeit drugs were a problem that was always there, that I always noticed,” says Odumade, citing a statistic that 500,000 people die each year in sub-Saharan Africa from counterfeit or substandard drugs. Around the world, that number is close to one million people, according to the World Health Organization. Counterfeit drugs fall into two main categories. There are fake drugs that contain less of or replaced active ingredients, which may be harmful. Then there are substandard drugs which come from the original manufacturers but have factory errors and abnormal composition or not enough active ingredients.
While he was thinking about how to tackle this problem, the issue came close to him when a friend, a nurse in Ghana, had a patient who died when his kidney ruptured after taking counterfeit antimalarial medication. “This was an affirmation of what I need to do,” says Odumade. “The problem hadn’t been solved for a long time and was still having this impact on lives.”
The Solution
In establishing Chekkit, Odumade developed a solution that tracks products and connects supply chains using blockchain technology. In developed nations, such as the United States, GS1-based systems regularize barcodes and serial codes, guarantee consistency among products, and allow products to move efficiently and securely. Nigeria, and many other countries in the developing world, do not have the benefit of such infrastructure, which makes it difficult to trace the origin of drugs or any other packaged goods. Chekkit helps solve this problem.
How It Works
Although barcodes identify products, they don’t go very far in determining whether a product is counterfeit or authentic. “A counterfeiter can make an identical product with identical packaging,” says Odumade. “Chekkit exists to provide unique identifiers and an electronic means of transferring them between parties.” In order to accomplish this, Chekkit produces a label for each package (leveraging GS1’s global standard for serialization), which includes a cryptographic unique identifier in the form of a QR code, data matrix code, or pin. Consumers or vendors are able to scan this information or enter it into a system in order to determine its authenticity and manufacturers are able to trace their products beyond the distributor.
The complexity of the African market has made traceability elusive for both producers and consumers. In the current distribution model, manufacturers are left in the dark once their products are delivered to distributors. “The market is heavily fragmented and the only way to solve the problem of counterfeiting is to unify the market,” says Odumade, who sees a solution by developing infrastructure that unifies a supply chain from end to end. “African countries are beginning to mandate policies around traceability.”
Currently, three African countries mandate traceability as a standard (GS1-based) for bringing a product to the market and Nigeria is poised to become the fourth. Odumade sees this as a game changer for the implementation of Chekkit’s technology as a middleware that transfers product master data from the Manufacturing Authorisation Holder’s (MAH) Contract Manufacturers (CMOs) to the destination country’s repository. The company has received the first accreditation for traceability in Nigeria and is prepared to provide traceable information on packages in accordance with GS1 standards globally. “The timing is good,” says Odumade. “I’m a visionary leader and I see possibilities in this part of the world for more streamlined structures and processes in the supply chain.”
Another challenge of implementing streamlined supply chain systems is that each company bringing products to the market has its own system of logistics. Chekkit works around this by providing a product nimble enough to plug into a variety of supply chain systems. For example, a manufacturer like Pfizer might use software such as an ERP extension to control their supply chain. Yet, within the ERP system there’s a space for track and trace, explains Odumade. “That’s where we plug in via APIs and ingest the existing serialization to log on our distributed ledger network to securely cryptograph the codes or generate new ones as requested by the MAH.” By producing or ingesting and printing traceable serial codes they provide secured unique identifiers and “last mile” traceability, extending beyond the warehouse via engagement with key supply chain stakeholders.
Further Applications
Depending on the goals of a particular company, Chekkit’s digital identifiers can be modified to provide direct links between consumers/retailers and producers.
Chekkit App and Mobile SDK allow consumers to verify products and give feedback, usually with some sort of incentive or reward (The Token Program). For companies or organizations, this provides important insight into consumer behavior. Nivea used Chekkit’s labels and technology for an in-store reward campaign. Consumers verified the product using USSD, a global system for off-internet mobile communications, answered surveys, and received a free product. These survey responses (depending on the choice of questions), indicated the customers are pleased by the quality and availability but had concerns about affordability of the brand.
Odumade thinks this holds huge potential for business strategy, explaining that information about changes in demand gleaned directly from consumers can have significant financial repercussions and plans to amplify these AI-generated insights by matching these insights further with social media data related to each SKU tracked, thus generate demand predictions from the resulting patterns.
In a social campaign, water bottles were given out at a protest against police brutality. A QR code on the water bottle led protesters to an online survey where they could complete a survey about police brutality thereby educating organizers about the opinions and issues important to the protesters.
Although Chekkit started out by tackling the problem of counterfeit drugs — and that remains their primary objective — they discovered a much larger problem in the process. “Global supply chains are not interconnected,” says Odumade. “You don’t have an ability to go end to end with your products,” he adds. Whether identifying counterfeit drugs or allowing businesses to communicate directly with their consumers, Chekkit’s supply chain goes all the way from the producer to the end consumer as a digital infrastructure.
Where They Are in the Process
Currently, Chekkit is tracking +200 Million Unique Identifiers for 22 paying customers, including global pharmaceutical companies like Merck and smaller companies across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Their system is fully operational. “We have a full solution that includes SaaS and APIs for serialization, meta-data customisation, and traces supply chain all the way down to the retailers and consumers with mobile app or SDK for integrations. Most of our customers have seen 1.2 times to 1.3 times increase in revenue since working with Chekkit,” says Odumade, adding that the service is currently set up to facilitate both distribution tracking (even discover product/market diversions) and consumer engagement.
So far they have raised one million dollars and are leveraging their company for maximum reach and blitz-scaling. While their initial focus has been Nigeria, they have serviced customers through partners in South Africa, Rwanda, Afghanistan, UAE, and India. They are looking to scale throughout Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with an eye on India for its large drug manufacturing industry. Ultimately, they hope that the Chekkit digital identifier will be a signifier for authentic products, telling its history and provenance both within the pharmaceutical industry and beyond.
Our Take
Nigeria, like much of Africa, is experiencing huge growth. “The aggressive growth of the market creates new complexities, which also creates opportunities,” says Odumade. Chekkit is taking on a foundational opportunity by streamlining supply chains and fostering a circular and sustainable economy as the leading digital infrastructure. In doing so, they are not only tackling counterfeit drugs but also providing technology and systems that show promise for revolutionizing the way packaged products are delivered and traced throughout the developing world.
Join us in welcoming Dare Odumade and his team at Chekkit to our global community of Health Transformers.
→ Connect with Chekkit via email
Last Call for T1D Innovation
Are you a scientist or innovator focused on T1D innovation who would benefit from education about how to navigate and build a company that will be successful in attracting mission-aligned capital, customers, and collaborators to pursue scientific discoveries in the field of Type 1 diabetes? Only a few spots are left in our T1D Moonshot Fellowship. Learn more and apply.
Call for Alzheimer’s Innovation
With support from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and Gates Ventures, we’ve launched a new global initiative created to develop a collaborative innovation community alongside leading companies, research teams, and stakeholders with a mission to accelerate progress in prevention, diagnosis, and management of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Learn more and apply for an Alzheimer’s Moonshot Fellowship.
Become a Health Moonshot Champion
Health moonshots are fueled by passionate families, foundations, and industry organizations committed to achieving health moonshots. Learn how you can join other champions of the T1D Moonshot or one of our other global health moonshots.
Follow us on social media for daily updates on Health Transformers: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Published: Feb 22, 2024