A Blockchain Based Platform to Secure Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

Project Title

A Blockchain Based Platform to Secure Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

Project Area of Specialization BlockchainProject Summary

Pharmaceuticals industry is a very complex supply chain in which assets (i.e. tablets, syrups and injections etc.) change ownership a few times with little to no data sharing in between the parties involved, due to which the history of the assets is not maintained, hence making it easy for fraudsters to introduce falsified and substandard or counterfeit medicines into the market resulting in health issues to patients and financial losses to drugs manufacturing companies.Our project aims to create a proper track and trace system that provides visibility and provenance of the pharmaceutical assets to all the participants at every point of the supply chain with the help of the emerging technology blockchain that has proved to be a source of establishing trust using its semidecentralized nature.Our project also accompanies the user with a generic application that scans the QR code of the medicine displays the history of the product in the supply chain.
 

Project Objectives

Synchronization:

Many times, the data from a company is synchronized with its own servers and software, in protocols and data formats that can only be understood by that speci?c piece of software. If many companies share this same software, then they can easily integrate the information between themselves.

Provenance:

The origin of the mdicine in  the supply chain and its complete history can be traced back from the point of manufacture to the point of sale.

Tracking:

In the lifecycle of these products alot of problems can occur at any point in the supply chain like temperature issues which increases reliability .A blockchain system can help maintain transaction for every timestamp in the life of product.

 Security:

This point is one of the most important to deal with, as security is comprised of many aspects, such as: who to authorize to access the information and how to restrict this, what authentication methods should be used, how to accurately detect and prevent fraud, etc. 

Project Implementation Method

As pharmaceutical supply chain is complex ,Majority of the countries are using the GS1 standars for encoding QR codes with unique GTIN on each batch or medicines Our Permissioned blockchain networ is going to use each medince or QR codes a unique identification number for the track of its assets.Moreover.each particpant has its own end user application that will be connected via rest service to our blockchain network.Each participant will make the transaction from its own end that its has recieved the batch or not.On running the transaction the smart contracts will run that will the check the constraints defined for that batch.The transaction will take the consent of all the respectivve authorities that are part of the transaction associated to that asset. in the form of consensus mechanism. If all the participants approve of the trannsaction then it will take place and the ledger on all the peer nodes will be updated.The peer nodes have the replicated ledger and is present accross the whole network connecting all of the particpants together.

At the end the customer will be able to scan the QR code from the medicine to identify its source and history to autenticate its validity. This solution basically eliminates all the odds of a falsified of counterfiet medicine to occur or replicate in the supply chain. Also the partocipants will have a shared view of the ledger and have trust on each other due to immutibility of the ledger.

Benefits of the Project

 Less error prone: reduction in errors on manual data entries, especially when combined with IoT and other automated processes
 Enhanced security of transactions:not only is the ledger immutable, attempts at fraud are easily detected.

 Improved tracking: the ledger is easy to analyze and delivers the results really fast, making it possible to know the status of any order or asset at any time; at the same time, any error, either accidental or on purpose, that manages to ?nd its way into the system is easily traceable.

Improved consumer trust:

blockchain could allow users to check the provenance of their products, developing a relationship of trust with the suppliers.

Reduced costs: reduced governance costs for exchanging info and etc, allowing for higher ef?ciency and faster times at processing the information (enhancing cost effectiveness); reduced internal management costs, increasing ef?ciency and sustaining competitiveness; reduced product or service costs, creating competitive advantage and barriers to competition, reduced supply chain lead times and increased ?exibility in supply chain design.

Internal supply chain trust: It is important that the elements of a supply chain trust the information that comes and goes from each other, and blockchain allows this to happen.
 

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

We are using the Permissioned blockchain infrastructure called Hyperledger which has different set of tools.As we ere making a Proof of concept application so we have used a fast paced distributed application development platform Hyperledger Composer.

Hyperledger Composer:

The tools provides an interface for all the participants in the network through their own separate wallets

Wallets: it is an interface for the members to access the relevant information regarding the assets available to them .

The system is used to create the blockchain network archive which is a file in which blockchain network is modeled and defined.

Model Language:

Its used to construct the overall structure of the blockchain network the assets and the participants and transactions definitions are defined there.

Logic File:

It defines the whole network smart contracts or transacytions realted to each participant and assets in java script.

System File:

This file defines the rules as how much on each transaction or asset the access is granted to the customer.

Query File:

Its used to write SL queries to receive information from the ledger.

These all files combined makes the BNA which is then deployed on Hyperledger Fabric. which is the main blockchain infrastructure .

Hyperledger Fabric:

HLF provides multiple services like orderers ,Peers ,Anchor Peers ,Endorsing Peers, which makes it a blockchain platform.The bna is deployed over it to use its services. ailablre in different docker containers

QR Code Scanner Application:

There is Qr code scanner application at each end of the participant to scan the Qr code from each Batch of the medicine to enter its data and authenticity through transactions to the ledger. QR code is already printed on each of the medicine or batch  according to the GS! standacrds.

Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemType of Industry IT , Medical Technologies BlockchainSustainable Development Goals Good Health and Well-Being for People, Industry, Innovation and InfrastructureRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	75239
Laptop	Equipment	1	65000	65000
Online Course (Blockchain Development on Hyperledger Fabric)	Miscellaneous	1	3541	3541
Online Course(Hyperledger Fabric Network Design and Setup))	Miscellaneous	1	1698	1698
Printing (FYP Report)	Miscellaneous	1	2000	2000
Other Reports Printing	Miscellaneous	1	1000	1000
CDs	Equipment	5	100	500
Poster	Miscellaneous	1	1000	1000
Petrol	Miscellaneous	1	500	500