Retail Giant Walmart Enters Second Drug-Tracking Blockchain Trial

Retail giant Walmart is amping up efforts to harness the power of blockchain record-keeping in pharmaceutical tracking, while also hedging its bets as to the specific technology it's committing to.

The big-box retail giant said Thursday it will participate in a drug-verification pilot with IBM, KPMG and drugmaker Merck.

This is the second such pilot involving Walmart to be announced in as many weeks, and it adds yet another flavor of distributed ledger technology to the drug-tracking use case.

Whereas MediLedger builds upon a private version of ethereum called Parity, the IBM/Walmart project will use Hyperledger Fabric - a sign that Walmart isn't yet committed to any single platform.

Big retailers broadly are clearly getting more comfortable with blockchain technology and exploring multiple options.

Earlier this week, it emerged that Target is participating in a Hyperledger supply chain tracking project called Grid, while also pursuing its own blockchain project called ConsenSource.

"We are learning, which is the point of these pilots, but our ultimate goal through both is to create a safer, more transparent supply chain for our customers," said Walmart spokeswoman Marilee McInnis.

The new drug pilot will build on the work Big Blue has already done with Walmart, said Mark Treshock, IBM's blockchain solutions Leader for healthcare and life sciences.

On the subject of Walmart participating in a Hyperledger pilot with IBM and at the same time working with Mediledger's ethereum-based blockchain, Eric Garvin, co-lead at MediLedger, said it was not surprising since Walmart and IBM collaborate on FoodTrust.

The FDA's mandate for drug tracking lists "Interoperability" as a key requirement and putative benefit of digitalizing the supply chain, raising the question of whether competing enterprise blockchain protocols can be made to communicate with each other - or if businesses will eventually have to consolidate platforms.