A Secure Blockchain-based Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Management System: Traceability and Detection of Counterfeit Covid-19 Vaccines

ABSTRACT

Despite the network and internet technologies development, cases of counterfeit medicine still exist and an unreliable pharmaceutical supply chain infrastructure is one of the key factors behind drug counterfeiting. Before reaching the patient, medicines are transferred from suppliers to wholesalers, distributors, and pharmacists. Currently, information is not exchanged between supply chain management systems. Therefore, there is no visibility on the drug supply chain. Drug counterfeiting issue has become more important during the side spread of coronavirus disease due to the high popularity of this disease's vaccine. Even though this vaccine can help millions of people to eliminate coronavirus, the fake vaccine might be killable for them. This paper is proposing a solution by using blockchain technology for developing a secure pharmaceutical supply chain management system. This technology can add visibility, traceability, security, and transparency to the supply chain system. It is considered that to store the transactions, a permissioned blockchain will be used for this system, and only trusted parties will be permissioned to push data to the blockchain. By the end of this paper, a secure blockchain-based drug supply chain management system will be proposed by the researcher. © 2022 IEEE.