Trusted Traceability and Certification of Refurbished Medical Devices Using Dynamic Composable NFTs

Abstract

Medical devices play a crucial role in the global healthcare system, but their high cost has led to the increasing adoption of refurbished medical devices as a sustainable alternative for hospitals and patients around the world. The repositioning of refurbished devices into the market, however, is accompanied by a number of challenges, including concerns about quality and safety, as well as the risk of fraudulent activities such as counterfeiting. To address these challenges, we propose an NFT-based solution for managing refurbished medical devices that creates a secure, transparent, and verifiable record of the refurbishment process to ensure the safety and quality of these devices. The proposed solution utilizes dynamic composable NFTs as digital representations of medical devices, with replacement parts and certificate documents embedded in a parent-child NFT hierarchy, and reprocessing steps captured and reflected through the evolution of the dynamic tokens. This serves to authenticate and track the movement of refurbished devices while also providing a trustworthy means of managing individual devices and their ownership. Furthermore, the integration of non-transferable NFTs as certificates of refurbishment acts as an effective mechanism for detecting suspect medical devices and instances of fraudulent labeling, thereby increasing buyer confidence and promoting user safety. We leverage the Interplanetary File System to store and keep track of the metadata of the tokenized components of the system. We present the system architecture and implementation details with tested algorithms. We develop a front-end decentralized application (DApp) to interact with the designed smart contracts and showcase their functionalities. We also conduct security analysis to demonstrate our system is resistant to common vulnerabilities and exploits. The smart contract code is made available on GitHub.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in healthcare: a thematic analysis and research agenda

“…The aim of doing so was to ensure the authenticity and quality of the products through the supply chain. Three of the four papers represented the object being traced as a virtual product (digital twin) ( 25 , 26 , 32 ). The emergence of NFTs presents a unique opportunity to enhance transparency, traceability, security and streamlining of operations.…”

“…Blockchain technology and NFTs can be utilized to create digital twins, providing a transparent, immutable platform and allowing for decentralized storage ( 13 , 45 ). Medical devices can be digitally represented as NFTs with replacement parts and certificate documents embedded in a parent-child relationship ( 25 ). Moreover, these dynamic NFTs capture the reprocessing steps and can be used to authenticate and track the movement of refurbished medical devices.…”

“…The medicine supply chain stakeholders should provide a means to track and trace pharmaceutical supplies that pass along the supply chain ( 42 ). NFTs represent a perfect digital twin of any physical item that passes along a supply chain and provides for traceability processes ( 25 , 26 ). An entity in the supply chain, the token owner, can invoke a smart contract through their private key to pass the token to the following entity in the supply chain.…”

Non-fungible token integration in neurosurgery: a technical review

“…An NFT-based mechanism can address these challenges by providing a transparent and verifiable record of each device’s refurbishment journey. By employing NFTs, each stage of refurbishment can be documented, thereby bolstering confidence in the device’s authenticity and safety [ 31 ]. Such a system may not only deter fraudulent activities but can also enhance the trustworthiness of these vital medical tools within neurosurgery.…”

Confidential Certified Notification Protocol Using Rejectable Soulbound Tokens and Identity-Based Cryptography

“…For example, in [19] the use of NFTs to manage academic certificates is proposed, but the future research plans of the authors are to investigate the use of SBTs. Similarly, Gebreab et al propose the use of SBTs in managing the refurbishment process of medical devices to ensure their safety and quality, representing the refurbishment certificates with soulbound tokens [20].…”