A Blockchain-based approach for Drug Traceability in Healthcare Supply Chain

Abstract

The blockchain typically described as a decentralized system in which transactional or ancient statistics are recorded, stored, and maintained throughout a peer-to-peer community of personal computers referred to as nodes. Counterfeit drugs are one consequence of such limitations within existing supply chains, which not only has serious adverse impact on human health but also causes severe economic loss to the healthcare industry. Blockchain technology has gained tremendous attention, with an escalating hobby in a plethora of several applications like safe and relaxed healthcare records management. Similarly, blockchain is reforming the traditional healthcare practices to an extra reliable means, in phrases of powerful prognosis and treatment through safe and cosy facts sharing using SHA Hash Generation Algorithm. Within the future, blockchain will be an era that can probably assist in personalized, authentic, and at ease healthcare by means of merging the entire actual-time scientific information of a patient’s fitness and offering it in an up to date cosy healthcare setup. In this paper, we evaluation each the present and modern day trends inside the subject of healthcare with the aid of imposing blockchain as a model. We also talk the packages of blockchain, at the side of the demanding situations confronted and destiny views. The proposed system executed blockchain implementation in distributed computing surroundings and it gives the automated restoration of invalid chain by using Consensus and Mining Algorithm. In this system, we present a Custom blockchain-based approach leveraging smart contracts and decentralized off-chain storage for efficient product traceability in the healthcare supply chain. The smart contract guarantees data provenance, eliminates the need for intermediaries and provides a secure, immutable history of transactions to all stakeholders. We present the system architecture and detailed algorithms that govern the working principles of our proposed solution. We perform testing and validation, and present cost and security analysis of the system to evaluate its effectiveness to enhance traceability within pharmaceutical supply chains.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

A blockchain system can be considered as a virtually incorruptible cryptographic database where critical medical information could be recorded. The system is maintained by a network of computers, that is accessible to anyone running the software. Blockchain operates as a pseudo-anonymous system that has still privacy issue since all transactions are exposed to the public, even though it is tamper-proof in the sense of data-integrity. The access control of heterogeneous patients’ healthcare records across multiple health institutions and devices needed to be carefully designed. Blockchain itself is not designed as the large-scale storage system. In the context healthcare, a decentralized storage solution would greatly complement the weakness of blockchain in the perspective. The blockchain network as a decentralized system is more resilient in that there is no singlepoint attack or failure compare to centralized systems. However, since all the bitcoin transactions are public and everybody has access, there already exist analytics tools that identify the participants in the network based on the transaction history. With popularity analytics, similarity or closeness among topics within large volume of data can be detected. Groups of items or topics can be system generated using closeness relationship formulation. As information flows among different nodes in bitcoin network, Bitcoin transaction is slow due to the fact that information needs to be propagated across the network to synchronize the ledger replicas. The slow dissemination of information exposes a potential security hole for the malicious attacks. Some measures have been implemented to mitigate the number of the blockchain forks in the network by 50%. However, a long-term solution is still needed. Like any other networks, Bitcoin network is no exception when it comes to malicious attacks. One of the notable form of attack against Bitcoin network topology is eclipsing attack by using information propagation knowledge. Bitcoin peer-to-peer network topology can be inferred and utilized by malicious attackers to perform precise attacks such as eclipsing attack. By observing the flooding process of the information flow, a flooding network’s topology can be inferred. A network topology inference method has been proposed along with a proof of concept in real network. The critical players of bitcoin transactions can be identified use various network centrality metrics. Blockchain might replace conventional methods of keeping track of valuable information such as contracts, intellectual-property rights, and corporate accountings.

Personal healthcare records need to be protected with the highest standard. With the increasing number of data breach incidents in the past several years, the awareness of the general public about the personal data privacy will continue to increasing. The necessity for data privacy will grow stronger with an increasing number of services and device collecting our personal data associated with our personal identity. There are techniques that obfuscate the linking of pseudonymous address and the real person such as Coin Join.

II. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

1. To design approach for health insurance company where system store all historical data into block chain manner.
2. To create a fog computing environment hierarchy for parallel data processing for end users applications.
3. To design implement own SHA family block for whole blockchain.
4. Each transaction has stored on dependant blockchain in cloud environment.
5. To design and implement a new mining technique for generate new block for each transaction.
6. To implement a verification algorithm which can validate each peer on every access request
7. To implement our contribution that is Emergency Medicine Tracking

III. STATEMENT OF SCOPE

Blockchain, the digital ledger technology that can securely maintain continuously growing lists of data records and transactions, has the power to potentially transform health care, according to industry experts. By simplifying and expediting the way the health care industry processes data in such areas as revenue cycle management, health data interoperability and supply chain validation, blockchain has the power to dramatically reduce back-office data input and maintenance costs and improve data accuracy and security. This scope of proposed work in below data-driven areas:

1. Longitudinal Health Care Records - Can blockchain enable patient records to securely link and be accessible across non-affiliated provider organizations to improve care coordination?
2. Automated Health Claims Adjudication - By using a “smart contract” structure, can blockchain help seamlessly adjudicate payers’ and patients’ provider payments for a more costefficient process?
3. Interoperability - Can blockchain overcome current patient data interoperability issues and gather the information needed to more effectively support population health initiatives for large health systems?
4. Online Patient Access - Will blockchain technology enable patients to more easily, effectively and securely gain access to their own medical records?
5. Supply Chain Management - Can blockchain enhance health care contract management and reduce costs by allowing such features as real-time contract tracking and execution.

???????IV. METHODOLOGIES OF PROBLEM SOLVING

1. Requirement Gathering And Analysis: In this step of waterfall we identify what are various requirements are need for our project such are software and hardware required, database, and interfaces.
2. System Design: In this system design phase we design the system which is easily understood for end user i.e. user friendly. We design some UML diagrams and data flow diagram to understand the system flow and system module and sequence of execution.
3. Implementation: In implementation phase of our project we have implemented various module required of successfully getting expected outcome at the different module levels. With inputs from system design, the system is first developed in small programs called units, which are integrated in the next phase. Each unit is developed and tested for its functionality which is referred to as Unit Testing.
4. Testing: The different test cases are performed to test whether the project module are giving expected outcome in assumed time. All the units developed in the implementation phase are integrated into a system after testing of each unit. Post integration the entire system is tested for any faults and failures.
5. Deployment of System: Once the functional and non-functional testing is done, the product is deployed in the customer environment or released into the market.
6. Maintenance: There are some issues which come up in the client environment. To fix those issues patches are released. Also to enhance the product some better versions are released. Maintenance is done to deliver these changes in the customer environment.

All these phases are cascaded to each other in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards like a waterfall through the phases. The next phase is started only after the defined set of goals are achieved for previous phase and it is signed off, so the name ”Waterfall Model”. In this model phases do not overlap.

V. PROBLEM STATEMENT

In the proposed research work to design and implement a system for health care data and medicine tracking, where user can store all information in single blockchain without any Trusted Third Party (TTP) in fog computing environment. The system also carried out data integrity, confidentiality as well as eliminate the inconsistency for end user. Also we focus our contribution part that is emergency medicine tracking system and give to valid patients.

VI. ADVANTAGES

1. Increased transparency: Blockchain technology allows for the creation of an immutable and transparent ledger that records all transactions in the supply chain. This increased transparency can help to reduce the risk of counterfeit drugs entering the supply chain.
2. Improved efficiency: By using a blockchain-based system, healthcare organizations can streamline their supply chain processes and reduce the amount of time it takes to track and trace drugs. This can lead to improved efficiency and reduced costs.
3. Enhanced security: Blockchain technology is highly secure and resistant to tampering. This makes it an ideal solution for drug traceability, as it can help to prevent the introduction of counterfeit drugs into the supply chain.
4. Better compliance: With a blockchain-based system, healthcare organizations can ensure that they are in compliance with regulatory requirements, such as the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) in the United States.
5. Greater trust: By using a blockchain-based system, healthcare organizations can create a more trustworthy and reliable supply chain. This can help to improve patient safety and ensure that patients receive the drugs they need, when they need them.

VII. OUTCOME

The potential outcomes of a project on ”A Blockchain-based approach for Drug Traceability in Healthcare Supply Chain” can include:

1. Improved Transparency And Visibility Of The Drug Supply Chain: Blockchain technology can enable real-time tracking of drugs, from the manufacturer to the end-user, ensuring that all transactions are recorded and accessible to authorized stakeholders.
2. Reduced Counterfeiting: Blockchain can provide a tamper-proof and immutable record of the drug’s movement, making it difficult for counterfeiters to introduce fake drugs into the supply chain.
3. Enhanced Patient Safety: With improved drug traceability, patients can be assured that the medicines they are taking are genuine and safe, reducing the risk of adverse drug reactions.
4. Improved Regulatory Compliance: Blockchain-based solutions can help pharmaceutical companies comply with regulatory requirements related to drug traceability, serialization, and recall management.
5. Improved Efficiency And Cost Savings: Blockchain-based solutions can reduce manual effort and paperwork, streamline supply.

References

[1] Gupta A, Patel J, Gupta M, Gupta H., , Issues and Effectiveness of Blockchain Technology on Digital Voting. International Journal of Engineering and Manufacturing Science, Vol. 7, No. 1 [2] Navya A., Roopini R., SaiNiranjan A. S. et. Al, Electronic voting machine based on Blockchain technology and Aadhar verification, International Journal of Advance Research, Ideas and Innovations in Technology, (Volume 4, Issue 2) [3] Hardwick, Freya Sheer, Raja Naeem Akram, and Konstantinos Markantonakis. ”E-Voting with Blockchain: An E-Voting Protocol with Decentralization and Voter Privacy.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.10258 .

Copyright

Copyright © 2023 Kiran Bhagwat , Pratibha Sudrik, Shraddha Pawar, Vishwanath Waghchaure, Prof. A. P. Suryavanshi . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.