Background: Substandard and falsified (SF) pharmaceuticals account for an estimated 10% of the pharmaceutical supply chain in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where a lack of regulatory and laboratory resources limits the
ability to conduct effective post-market surveillance and allows SF products to penetrate the supply chain.
The Distributed Pharmaceutical Analysis Laboratory (DPAL) is an alliance of academic institutions that provides validated chemical analysis of pharmaceutical dosage forms sourced from partners.
This secure, distributed ledger will allow stakeholders to view results and experimental details for each sample in real time and verify the integrity of the DPAL analysis including physical location, provenance of metadata, and lab reputability. Ultimately, analysis results will detect patterns of quality within and across brands of products, develop
enhanced sampling techniques and best practices.
