Blockchain Technology to Combat Counterfeiting of Drugs in the Pharmaceutical Industry (original) (raw)
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PharmaCrypt: Blockchain for Critical Pharmaceutical Industry to Counterfeit Drugs
Computer
This research analyses the impact of counterfeit drugs on the healthcare supply chain industry and evaluates the solutions currently in place to reduce the number of fake counterfeits coming to the market. The discussions are undertaken to determine what conceptions industry professionals have about applying Blockchain in the pharmaceutical industry, especially in the supply chain. The obtained feedback information is used to build requirements for a Blockchain driven tool called "PharmaCrypt". This tool will be used to track and trace drugs as they move through the supply chain, uploading the data collected to a distributed Blockchain ledger validating the authenticity of the drug. Through a setup, we have built a tool prototype that uses the Amazon Web Services Blockchain platform to show the feasibility of implementing such technology within the industry.
IJERT-Blockchain to Overcome Counterfeiting of Medicines
International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology (IJERT), 2021
https://www.ijert.org/blockchain-to-overcome-counterfeiting-of-medicines https://www.ijert.org/research/blockchain-to-overcome-counterfeiting-of-medicines-IJERTCONV9IS03008.pdf The production and distribution of falsified drugs, especially in developing countries, is a pressing and increasingly important global issue. The pharmaceutical duplication market estimate has crossed billions of dollars annually. The fragmented supply chain network in the pharmaceutical industry is one explanation for forging medications. Medications change possession from maker to distributor, wholesaler, and pharmacist before it arrives at the end-user. Data is not exchanged between systems, suppliers don't have an idea of what is going to happen to their products in the current supply chain environment, drugs administrative authorities have zero system perceptions, evaluation procedures are complicated and expensive, and organizations can't catch up patients. In this paper, we discussed how to use the blockchain innovation in the pharmaceutical supply chain to include traceability, accessibility, and protection in the drug processes. In the pharmaceutical industry, the proposed system will be used to track medicines from development to delivery to patients. Authorized blockchain is used to store transactions, and only trusted parties are allowed to join the system and push information to the blockchain.
Combating Drug Counterfeiting by Tracing Ownership Transfer Using Blockchain Technology
International Journal of E-Health and Medical Communications
Supply chain management in healthcare sector plays significant role in the lives of people. Presence of intermediaries and lack of traceability has lured it towards drug counterfeiting, which reduces drug efficacy, thus hampering patients' trust and putting their lives in danger. Blockchain has emerged as a groundbreaking technology which provide a system that is immutable and transparent without the requirement of a trusted third party. This paper depicts how blockchain can provide a solution to reduce drug counterfeit in the pharmaceutical supply chain. This is achieved by creating a Blockchain Network in which each participant and the drug is registered to maintain transparency of transactions among all the participants. Realtime transfer of ownership in the blockchain creates all-round visibility among the registered participants to retrieve information like the current owner, timestamp of ownership transfer and authenticity of drugs. This paper implements PharmaChain for re...
Blockchain technology -A basic need of the pharmaceutical industry
International Journal of Advance Research in Computer Science and Management Studies (IJARCSMS), 2022
This paper makes an honest attempt to assess the need of blockchain technology in the pharmaceutical industry. Blockchain is an advanced level of technology and implementing it in the pharmaceutical industry can ensure data integrity and secure digital data traceability in the supply chain. The supply chain in the pharmaceutical industry is an integral and critical process. It must secure medicine authenticity to mitigate the risk of counterfeit drugs supply, shortage of authentic drugs in the market. Blockchain technology embedded in the pharmaceutical supply chain stored data in a distributed register on the identification of drugs produced by the plant, as well as records of their movements throughout the supply chain, can accurately determine the authenticity of pharmaceutical products lying on the shelves of pharmacies. The development and implementation of such a system can be a big step towards winning the exhausting fight against the easy availability of counterfeit drugs and medical products. This perspective highlights the need for implementing blockchain traceability technology for secure drug traceability in supply chain. It further explains the advantages of implementing digital traceability with blockchain technology in the pharma supply chain and how critical it is for future operations. Objective: This study intends to empirically examine the need of blockchain technology in the pharmaceutical industry to secure the supply chain and mitigate the risk of counterfeit drugs.
JMIR research protocols, 2018
Drug counterfeiting is a global problem with significant risks to consumers and the general public. In the Philippines, 30% of inspected drug stores in 2003 were found with substandard/spurious/falsely-labeled/falsified/counterfeit drugs. The economic burden on the population drug expenditures and on governments is high. The Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) encourages the public to check the certificates of product registration and report any instances of counterfeiting. The National Police of Philippines responds to such reports through a special task force. However, no literature on its impact on the distribution of such drugs were found. Blockchain technology is a cryptographic ledger that is allegedly immutable through repeated sequential hashing and fault-tolerant through a consensus algorithm. This project will develop and test a pharmacosurveillance blockchain system that will support information sharing along the official drug distribution network. This study ai...
JISR management and social sciences & economics
Blockchain Technology (BT) is recognized as a technology with multiple applications in many industries due to the nature of its utilization. In the pharmaceutical industry, an effective supply chain is crucial to mitigate the counterfeit medicine market, which is currently a big challenge, especially for low or middle-income countries. This research investigates the possibility of implementing blockchain technology solutions in Pakistan’s pharmaceutical industry by introducing blockchain Application Software. The pharmaceutical industry and General Practitioners from hospitals and clinics were interviewed in the public and private sectors to understand this possibility. Data coding was conducted on the data gathered from the interviews, and from these codes, categories were extracted, these categories were then further refined to extract the final themes. Finally, the paper discusses that based on the need of the current situation, the proposed BT system would present a solution for...
Blockchain for Combating Pharmaceutical Drug Counterfeiting and Cold Chain Distribution
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In recent years, pharmaceutical drug traceability systems have been developed as critical tools for improving the digital supply chain's transparency and visibility. Blockchain-based drug traceability proposes a promising solution to create a distributed shared data platform for an irreversible, trustworthy, reliable, and transparent system. This article provides a thorough analysis and summary of the current state of drug traceability distribution research on the blockchain platform by using Hyperledger febric and Hyperledger Besu methodologies. Blockchain based platform, Hyperledger Fabric and Besu meets essential needs for drug traceability such as privacy, dependability, transparency, security, authorization, authentication, and scalability. The Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform executes drug transactions proficiently and securely in the supply chains within a distributed network of stakeholders. This fabric-enabled private, permissioned distributed network comprising v...
Blockchain Implementation in Indian Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Diminish Counterfeit Product
Proceedings of the First Mandalika International Multi-Conference on Science and Engineering 2022, MIMSE 2022 (Informatics and Computer Science), 2022
The pharmaceutical counterfeit product problem has become a harmful problem for people in India and has drawn significant attention from everyone. It is very crucial for healthcare and daily life. The pharmaceutical industry and its supply chain are humongous and complex in management. The pharmaceutical industry and its supply chain are massive and complex in direction. It is very crucial for healthcare and daily life. Indian Pharmaceutical is the world's 3rd largest by volume and 14th largest in value. Not only is it complex, but it is inherent with the challenges like lack of transparency, traceability, security trust, and risk of counterfeit drugs. Forgery of pharmaceutical goods could be highly profitable. During globalization, the growth of online pharmacies and fraud cases are significantly increasing, leading to high death rates. Although there have been many studies on blockchain adoption in pharma supply chain management globally, it has been seen studies do not entirely investigate highlights. The advantages of blockchain enablers in pharmaceutical industries within India benefit the supply chain management performance. Therefore, this study bridges the research gap and analysis the enabler of the Blockchain technology and its adoption to have a sustainable supply chain. The study sheds light on how blockchain technology reduces the risks at each segment of the supply chain nodes. In addition, it also makes recommendations for deploying smart contracts in the pharmaceutical sector, which helps detect counterfeit goods to improve supply chain performance.
International Journal of Computer Applications, 2021
The safety of the pharmaceutical drug supply chain is a major concern for global public health as the plague of drug counterfeiting along the supply chain is an increasing threat to the health of everyone. Various solutions have been proposed to solve the problem, yet, the problem is still rife, as estimates reveal that between 10% – 30% of drugs in the developed and developing countries respectively are counterfeit. This research proposes an enhanced drug anti-counterfeiting and verification system, using blockchain, to counter the plague of drug counterfeiting along the supply chain, while providing a suitable means of verifying such drugs. Two germane smart contracts – shipDrug and receiveDrug – were defined to serve as a means of safely moving drugs from one supply chain actor to the other, to secure the drug supply chain from the infiltration of counterfeit drugs. The system was implemented on the Hyperledger Fabric. The implemented system effectively secured the supply chain by allowing only the valid supply chain actors to execute the defined smart contracts. Final consumers were able to verify a drug by using a unique identifier associated with that drug to query the transaction history from the blockchain ledger. Hyperledger Caliper was used to evaluate the proposed system where it was revealed that an optimal throughput of 46 drug verifications per second was obtained, with less utilization of CPU and memory resources. The health ramifications of drug counterfeiting and the findings from this research make it imperative to consider the proposed system as an effective drug anti-counterfeiting system. Finally, it was recommended that the global health authority could implement the system on a global scale, after a smaller scale implementation, such as within countries, to determine its effectiveness in securing the drug supply chain within such jurisdictions.
2018
Background: Drug counterfeiting is a global problem with significant risks to consumers and the general public. In the Philippines, 30% of inspected drug stores in 2003 were found with substandard/spurious/falsely-labeled/falsified/counterfeit drugs. The economic burden on the population drug expenditures and on governments is high. The Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) encourages the public to check the certificates of product registration and report any instances of counterfeiting. The National Police of Philippines responds to such reports through a special task force. However, no literature on its impact on the distribution of such drugs were found. Blockchain technology is a cryptographic ledger that is allegedly immutable through repeated sequential hashing and fault-tolerant through a consensus algorithm. This project will develop and test a pharmacosurveillance blockchain system that will support information sharing along the official drug distribution network. Objective: This study aims to develop a pharmacosurveillance blockchain system and test its functions in a simulated network. Methods: We are developing a Distributed Application (DApp) that will run on smart contracts, employing Swarm as the Distributed File System (DFS). Two instances will be developed: one for Ethereum and another for Hyperledger Fabric. The proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm of Ethereum will be modified into a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) or practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) consensus algorithm as it is scalable and fits the drug supply chain environment. The system will adopt the GS1 pedigree standard and will satisfy the data points in the data standardization guidelines from the US FDA. Simulations will use the following 5 nodes: for FDA, manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, and the consumer portal. Results: Development is underway. The design of the system will place FDA in a supervisory data verification role, with each pedigree type-specific data source serving a primary data verification role. The supply chain process will be initiated by the manufacturer, with recursive verification for every transaction. It will allow consumers to scan a code printed on the receipt of their purchases to review the drug distribution history. Conclusions: Development and testing will be conducted in a simulated network, and thus, results may differ from actual practice. The project being proposed is disruptive; once tested, the team intends to engage the Philippine FDA to discuss implementation plans and formulate policies to facilitate adoption and sustainability.