An Interactive Drug Supply Chain Tracking System Using Blockchain 2.0

Abstract

The modern pharmaceutical supply chain is a complex process in which researches is carried out to produce drugs and according to the research made the drugs is manufactured and these drugs are distributed from the manufacturer to the pharmacies. This process involves a number of stakeholders from manufacturer, wholesaler, distributor, pharmacies and finally end-users, the patients. At each stage, inventory must be managed based on demand in pharmaceutical products. Inventory management system is vital because an excess of inventory could cost the pharmacy money and it is more complex because it needs to track the lot numbers and expiration dates of medicines. Pharmaceutical supply chain suffers from various issues such as drug shortages, temperature control of drugs, lack of visibility in shipment and storage, inventory management, lack of coordination and the most important one drug counterfeiting. The principal regulatory bodies responsible for drug quality try to solve these issues by various ways. But they are very much unregulated, expensive and fragmented. The blossoming technology, Blockchain by its inherent properties such as immutability, transparency, and distributed nature could solve the problems of pharmaceutical supply chain. This paper starts with an introduction about Drug supply chain and their problems. It elucidates how Blockchain Technology could come to rescue pharmaceutical supply chain. This paper proposes a novel drug supply chain management system along with inventory management based on Blockchain 2.0 specifically Hyperledger Fabric. The proposed system records all transactions using Blockchain, thus helping in tracking the drug along its supply chain as well as solving the issues associated with drug supply chain in an efficient manner. It also measures performance of the proposed system using the Benchmark tool called Hyperledger caliper. The system proves its efficiency in terms of success rate, throughput and transaction latency.