Unveiling the Power of Blockchain in Pharmaceutical Supply Chains: Strengthening Security and Improving Drug Traceability

Abstract

Pharmaceutical supply chains involve multiple stakeholders at various stages, beginning with the API source, moving on to the medication manufacturer, packaging and distribution firms, administrative regulators, hospitals, pharmacies, and finally the patient. Because of the difficulty in tracking and ensuring authenticity, counterfeit drugs are more likely to penetrate the distribution system. Increasing counterfeit medicinal products in the markets are putting a potential threat to pharmaceutical supply chain and to life of innocent people. There is a need of technology that could provide privacy, trust, transparency, security, authorization, and authentication to the clients and show proof of origin of products. Due to significant qualities such as decentralisation, transparency, a trust-free environment, anonymity, and immutability, blockchain-based drug traceability provides a viable answer to this problem. Blockchain technology provides an efficient and cost-effective option for improving various drug traceability functions and procedures to assure appropriate identification. There are many other ways that blockchain is being used in the pharmaceutical industry, including the packaging and supply chain functions. This paper describes the challenges in pharmaceutical supply chain and how the blockchain combined with pharmaceutical supply chain can be a problem solver. We also provide a blockchain architectures for product traceability in the pharmaceutical supply chain system.

Keywords

• pharmaceutical supply chain
• drug traceability
• information sharing
• blockchain architectures
• healthcare
• security

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