Panalpina developers tackle traceability in pharma product supply chains at blockchain hackathon

A team of Panalpina IT developers from Basel and Lisbon will take a crack at creating solutions for better traceability and authentication within pharma product supply chains. They will take up the challenge to advance real-world blockchain solutions and join other competing teams at the Swiss Blockchain Hackathon being held from June 21 to 23, 2019 at the Trust Square blockchain hub in Zurich.

The largest blockchain hackathon in Switzerland aims to turn the promise of blockchain into tangible business applications across seven industry verticals: agriculture and food, e-government and public services, finance, intelligent parcels, mobility, sports and supply chain.

The organizers have worked to get major corporations, academic institutions and partners such as Amazon Web Services and PwC on board. Some 200 developers, creators and inventors are expected to attend this three-day event dedicated to turning blockchain into real-world solutions in diverse business fields.

As one of the supporting partners (together with Accenture, Cargolux, GS1 and Smart Containers) in the supply chain vertical, Panalpina has jointly defined the central challenge towards more efficient supply chains as one of traceability, interoperability and authentication – focusing on how to combine blockchain solutions and different standards to unlock value in collaborative ecosystems.

In addition, Panalpina has, together with Cargolux, defined one of three supply chain challenges to be solved during the hackathon: to create a solution that ensures traceability and authentication of unique products within the pharma supply chain. As part of this challenge, Panalpina’s five-member IT developer team will code and hack to enable disparate applications to create and share visible event data, both within and across enterprises.

The other two challenges in the supply chain vertical center on:

1. Creating a common application programming interface (API) to connect different blockchain technologies to enable standardized data exchange, and
2. Creating solutions to guarantee traceability and authentication within a public blockchain while maintaining confidential product information.

“Panalpina and its hacker team are looking forward to the hands-on challenge and learning experience, leading to innovative solutions that use blockchain in real-world supply chain applications,” says Luca Graf, head of Digital Innovation at Panalpina. “Good luck to all participating teams at the Swiss Blockchain Hackathon.”