PharmaChain 3.0: Efficient Tracking and Tracing of Drugs in Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Using Blockchain Integrated Product Serialization Mechanism

Globalization has revolutionized how different entities are distributed across locations interconnect and collaborated to enhance the availability of different services even at remote areas. Supply chains have played an important role in expanding business operations globally and at the same time increasing operational efficiency and reducing costs. Pharmaceutical Supply Chain (PSC) is one of the important aspects of healthcare which is vital for resource acquisition, manufacturing, and distribution of prescription drugs from the manufacturer site to patients. "Five rights of medication” is the main motto of the PSC which ensures the delivery of the right medicine to the right patient, at the right time, in the right doses, and through the appropriate route. Following this principle achieves patient safety in the healthcare system. However, as the number of entities participating in the PSC is large, which are geographically distributed and interact in complex ways makes the PSC more abstract and causes adversaries to introduce counterfeit medicines into the system. Developing a transparent PSC with no information fragmentation is very much needed for efficient track and trace along with easy identification and avoidance of counterfeit drugs. The current paper proposes one such architecture that is integrated with Blockchain, Distributed File Storage System, and Barcode technologies to provide a secure Barcode mechanism for addressing such tracking and tracing issues in the pharmaceutical supply chain. The novel product serialization mechanism proposed in PharmaChain 3.0 also ensures accurate identification, capture, and sharing of information about the drugs manufactured between these participating entities without the use of centralized entities and removing blind parties. The current system is designed to efficiently capture both Pedigree and T3 information of drugs in order to comply with regulations like Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) and Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA). Further, we have developed a proof-of-concept for the proposed system, and evaluation is performed focusing on the different aspects including system functionality, security, cost of execution, and adaptability.