PharmChain: A data-driven scenario-based drug traceability and regulation blockchain framework

Abstract

The manufacturing and distribution of counterfeit tablets, especially in developing countries, is an urgent and increasingly critical global problem. Falsified medicinal products may contain incorrect ingredients and doses. One of the reasons for drug counterfeiting is the imperfect supply chain system in the pharmaceutical industry. Medicinal products are moved between manufacturers, suppliers, wholesalers, retailers, and pharmaceutical firms before meeting consumers. This study proposes PharmChain, a scenario-oriented drug traceability and regulation blockchain framework that reconstructs the entire service infrastructure by splitting the service provider into three separate service components and ensuring the authenticity and privacy of traceability details. PharmChain can track medication development via patient supply in the pharmaceutical industry. An Ethereum-based blockchain stores the transactions, and only trusted parties can access the data through the chain. We create and test our smart contract code in the Remix environment. We present detailed cost and security analyses incurred by supply chain stakeholders. We also use cost analysis to assess the performance of the proposed solution and demonstrate its affordability.