The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of Thailand has announced that it is developing a blockchain platform that will track all data with digital signatures and timestamps in order to ensure greater transparency and security in the agency’s system. The FDA is a government agency of the Ministry of Public Health.

Blockchain Platform Brings Transparency to FDA Application Process

Pansak Pramokchon, Director of the Information Center at the FDA, said the agency has been developing blockchain solutions to improve its operations. The announcement was made at the third “Blockchain the Series @ BOT” conference held on May 29th, 2019 in Bangkok.

The first use case has been a host-to-host submission system, through which users applying for product registration can submit applications to the agency.

“For this project, the FDA received the 2017 Asia-Pacific Trade Facilitation Award, because the program was not only developed to ensure transparency and security, but also because it was developed in line with the National Single Window policy,” Pansak said.

According to the center director, the program uses machine learning throughout the process, from validation of product approval, business licensing, and risk assessment to analyzing whether the shipment requires further verification from FDA officials.

Blockchain to Realize Thailand’s Ambitions of e-Government

Pansak also disclosed that the FDA is fully committed to becoming an electronic organization, where all systems have been digitized and verifiable using a blockchain solution.

“With the latest host-to-host submission blockchain system that uses the machine-to-machine approach, the FDA allows users to better control their data,” the FDA official said.

He added that at the end of 2019, all FDA officials will have a digital signature and will be recorded with a timestamp when validating documents. Currently, the FDA is undertaking a proof of concept for the mobile signature system. This will ensure an overall faster process for FDA registration.

Source: https://www.bot.or.th