Blockchain enabled secure pharmaceutical supply chain framework with traceability: an efficient searchable pharmachain approach

Abstract

The complex networks of manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, and customers that make up today’s pharmaceutical supply chain span worldwide. As it is, there needs to be more transparency in the traditional pharma supply chain. Also, the global nature of this industry makes it vulnerable to problems caused by a lack of transparency, distrust among involved entities, and reluctance to share data. Such lack of transparency mainly causes concerns regarding pharmaceutical product supply record forgery and counterfeiting of drugs. Supply chain traceability, which means following a product’s journey from its manufacturing facility to its final consumers, is critically important, as it necessitates traceability, authenticity, and efficiency at a high level. This study proposes a blockchain-based secure and efficient traceable supply chain infrastructure for pharmaceutical products. Smart contracts are at the heart of the proposed solution, which tracks how all entities supply and record relevant events. Thus, all the involved entities can stay up-to-date on the latest state and guarantee a secure supply against any supply record forgery and counterfeit pharmaceutical products. In addition, we replicate the records in many chunks and use parallel search to achieve efficient traceability, which searches the stored records efficiently on the blockchain network. The comprehensive security analysis with standard theoretical proofs ensures the computational infeasibility of the proposed model. Further, the detailed performance analysis with test simulations shows the practicability of the proposed model.