SAP has launched a blockchain-based supply chain tracking system to allow drug wholesalers to authenticate pharmaceutical packaging returned by pharmacies and hospitals. That should help them weed out counterfeit drugs from their supply chain.

SAP says it hopes to eventually expand the use of distributed ledger technology to cover a broader range of pharmaceutical supply chain processes.

According to the company, its blockchain-based solution helps customers comply with the US Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), which establishes that as of November 2019, wholesalers must verify prescription drugs that are returned and intended for resale. This piece of legislation is tasked with protecting consumers from contaminated, stolen or fake medication.

Counterfeit drugs are a significant problem in the pharmaceutical industry. Research releasedby the World Health Organization in 2017 found that an estimated 1 in 10 medical products circulating in low-and-middle-income countries was either substandard or fake.

In the US, wholesalers encounter almost 60 million returns a year, accounting for an estimated $7 billion.
With the new software, customers can verify the product code, lot, expiration date and a unique serial number which is embedded in the barcode against manufacturers’ data stored in the blockchain.

It’s worth noting that the software was co-developed with other well-known pharmaceutical companies including Boehringer Ingelheim AG & Co. KG, GlaxoSmithKline plc and Merck Sharp & Dohme.

The news comes after SAP announced two industry consortia within the SAP Blockchain Consortium program in the fall of last year, but this is not the first time blockchain technology has been leveraged in a bid to fight counterfeit goods in the healthcare industry. In fact, Merck was looking to patentblockchain-based technology to bring greater transparency to the supply chain in June 2018.
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An immutable ledger such as blockchain would prove useful in the healthcare industry, so, it’s likely we’ll see similar projects launching soon.

Amazon now has a say in the development of a commonly used smart home standard, giving the company more power as it continues to push smart speakers, cameras, doorbells, and all other kinds of gadgets into its customers’ homes.

As of today, Amazon has a seat on the board of the Zigbee Alliance, which oversees implementation of the Zigbee wireless protocol. Zigbee isn’t nearly as popular as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, but you can think of it a lot like them – it’s a wireless protocol for letting gadgets communicate. But unlike Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, Zigbee is particularly useful for low-power devices and can travel longer distances, making it ideal for simple smart gadgets like a light switch.

Amazon introduced a version of the Echo, called Echo Plus, with Zigbee support more than a year ago. That support allowed the speaker to directly connect to a new world of smart home gadgets, like light bulbs, power outlets, and tiny sensors that it otherwise couldn’t have reached. The home alarm system for Ring, which Amazon owns, also connects to Zigbee.

It’s a slow start, but Amazon’s ascension to Zigbee’s board suggests the company will want to make more use of the protocol in the future. Other companies on Zigbee’s board include: 1) Samsung-owned SmartThings, which makes a smart home hub; 2) Signify, the company behind the popular Philips Hue smart lights; and 3) Comcast, which uses Zigbee on its Xfinity Home security solution.

Getting onto Zigbee’s board isn’t exactly a feat for Amazon, but it is an obvious and deliberate decision. Getting on the board means becoming one of the Alliance’s highest-paying members – $75,000 per year – and it gives those companies an significant advantage: they’re able to “drive specification development, requirements, and test plans.” Or basically, define where Zigbee goes next.
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If Amazon is paying that money, it means the company wants a say in what future versions of Zigbee can do and how different Zigbee devices work together. It also shows Amazon taking an opinion on which smart home standard it’d like to see win out. Zigbee’s most direct competitor is an alternative called Z-Wave, which hardware makers have criticized for relying on proprietary chips from a single company. Amazon is likely among the many companies in the smart home industry that would rather avoid dealing with the pricey parts that could come along with that if Z-Wave were to grow in popularity.

Drivers will soon have an extra set of eyes on the road, courtesy of Google.

Google’s navigation app, Google Maps, is starting to roll out speed limit and speed trap features. 

With the speed limit feature, drivers using Google Maps will be shown the posted speed limit of the road they’re driving on in the lower left side of the app. Speed traps are designated with a small camera icon and shown on the visible area of the map. The Maps app provides an audio warning for drivers when they are approaching a speed trap.

Users have had the ability to report speed traps in Google Maps since late last year. However, until now, the app wasn’t yet making the reported speed traps visible for users in maps. 

Google Maps users have long wondered when such features were going to make their debut on the service. Crowdsource-powered navigation app, Waze, grew in popularity for providing this sort of detailed information on the road. Google acquired Waze back in 2013 for around $1 billion. 

Now, nearly five and a half years later, some of the Waze features are finally making their way to Google Maps.

IBM recently debuted its System Onequantum computer. It’s not the biggest or most powerful computer the company makes. But IBM thinks it’s the one that’ll end up in a museum 50 years from now, and it’s hard not to agree. The IBM Q System One consolidates thousands of components into a glass-enclosed, air-tight environment.

In a recent interview with IBM‘s CTO, Quantum Computing, Bob Wisnieff he related some interesting insights into what it was like to develop and build the System One. He said the original idea was to show that IBM could make a reliable, functioning quantum computer that existed entirely outside of a laboratory.

IBM‘s System One is unique. It’s a legitimate quantum computing system that exists in a big box. It doesn’t have to be connected to a massive cooling system inside of a lab (it has its own, just like a mainframe or a PC). And it doesn’t require a physicist to dive under the hood every time you want to do something with it.
IBM Q Network organizations can program and run code on it right now.

The big picture wasn’t about what 20 qubits shoved inside a box can or can’t do, Wisnieff said. It’s about the fact it exists at all. He continued:

“What I like best is that we get to be in the right place at the right time for quantum computing, this is a joy project. This design represents a pivotal moment in tech.”

The “pivotal moment” bit might sound hyperbolic. Especially if you’ve seen the System One’s underwhelming coverage. James Vincent at The Verge, in an articleabout the System One, said:

"In the grueling race to build a practical quantum computer, tech companies are keeping their spirits up by loudly cheering every milestone — no matter how small."

Kieren McCarthy of The Register wrote an articleabout the system with the headline: “If you’ve been dying to run some math on a dinky toy quantum computer, IBM may have something for you.”

The quantum team at IBM spent about six months last year tossing ideas around, mostly trying to come up with solutions to the little problems that plague a project like this.

“In one way, you want to isolate the qubits from the universe,” Wisnieff said, before explaining “but you also have to have access to read and measure them.” Just one of many problems faced by an engineering team developing something that’s never been built before.

Once these problems got sorted, the IBM engineers and physicists then began working with design experts from Goppion, the company responsible for some of the world’s most famous museum-quality display cases, Universal Design Studioand Map Project Office. This was Wisnieff’s dream team.

These companies were chosen after IBM‘s Director of Research, Dario Gil, gave Wisnieff carte blanche to find the best designers in the world. Wisnieff said this was because Gil realized the significance of the project.

As Wisnieff explained the process of building the System One, it became clear the intent was never to create a device that would suddenly usher the era of commercial quantum computing into reality. IBM Research is working on that, so are Google and Intel and a bunch of other companies. But that’s not what System One was designed for.

There are plenty of qualified, sane experts who believe quantum computing technology will never amount to anything. Meanwhile, the physicists and engineers working on them understand they’ll be one of the most significant advancements in human history.

That’s a lot for a discerning public to put up with in their daily news feed and monthly science magazine. But when IBM built a functioning quantum computer in a box and demoed it at CES, it showed the entire world that quantum computers are here right now. And they’re only getting started.

It doesn’t matter if it can solve major problems or not. It’s not essential whether the System One will ever be sold as a commercial product or not – it almost certainly won’t. 
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What matters is that IBM took something that looked like this:

It’s real. You can touch it.
Fifty years from now MIT‘s physics lab, Google‘s quantum research center, or IBM’s large quantum lab won’t be faithfully recreated in a giant quantum museum. Instead, an actual quantum computer will sit inside one.
IBM unveiled the world’s first, and only, functioning integrated quantum computer that exists entirely outside of a lab. It’s not the quantum computer that will change everything. But it might be the one your grand-kids read about on page one of that chapter in their science textbooks.