A former Nottingham Forest striker is leading the fight against addiction to prescription drugs.
Dexter Blackstock is CEO of HealthTech disrupter MediConnect, a blockchain solution designed to track medication all the way through the supply chain from the point at which it is manufactured to its prescription by medical professionals and purchase by patients.
At a time when 200,000 Brits are said to be chronic users of prescription painkillers, MediConnect provides a blockchain solution to share information securely between companies, pharmacies, hospitals and health organisations.
“By centrally tracing the medical supply chain and preventing the oversubscription of prescription drugs, MediConnect will protect the health of patients and save the NHS millions of pounds,” said Blackstock, who also played more than 100 games for Queens Park Rangers and retired in 2017.
The British Business Federation Authority is helping to accelerate the development of MediConnect as the gold standard solution in patient care for UK pharmacies.
Its CEO Patrick Curry OBE has joined MediConnect as an adviser to the board and will bring extensive experience of deploying technological solutions to build secure collaboration between governments, industry bodies and private companies.
“We are delighted to receive the support of such an influential and well-connected adviser as Patrick,” said Blackstock.
“As head of the BBFA, Patrick specialises in seeing the value of technologies that can work between companies, industry bodies and governments.
“His support of MediConnect is therefore a highly significant endorsement of our solution and will help us onboard even more pharmacies and prescribers.”
MediConnect has agreed a five-year contract with the Addiction Safeguarding Committee Organisation, under which the organisation will exclusively use MediConnect’s blockchain solution and all ASC members will be integrated into the platform.
Two online pharmacies, UK Meds and Tower Health & Pharmacy, have already signed up to integrate MediConnect’s solution upon conclusion of the Company’s Initial Coin Offering.
A comprehensive pilot scheme is also planned with 8-10 local private and NHS pharmacies set to trial the solution, which will enable 360,000 patients to store their records securely on the MediConnect blockchain, processing 50,000 transactions every month.
Curry added: “MediConnect is an excellent example of a solution designed to tackle a problem by bringing industry, government and regulatory bodies together.
“The overuse of prescription medication is a growing and worrying trend in society and the need for controlled and trusted information sharing across the medical sector is key to addressing this. “Because MediConnect is focused on drug delivery to patients and not just on patient records, I see ground-breaking opportunities for significant wider benefits in mental health, unemployment, care for the elderly, other addictions including food, alcohol and gambling, as well as reductions in costs and risks across the health and pharmaceutical industries.
“I look forward to working with the MediConnect consortia to develop its blockchain-based solution to this very important, national, real-world problem.”