Blockchain to Build Trust in Pharmaceutical Supply Chain
What is Blockchain?
Blockchain is an emerging technology which provides a transparent, immutable, secured, tamper-proof environment for different stakeholders connected in a decentralised network in a trust less setup. It enables transactional sharing of data across stakeholders who don't trust each other.
Challenges faced by Pharmaceutical Supply Chains:
Lack of visibility and transparency throughout the supply chain:
Patients, regulators and retailers often do not know where drugs are coming from and whether they are certified or not. Drug shortages, counterfeits are some of the other challenges faced by the industry today.
Blockchain based use case for Pharmaceutical Supply Chain:
Blockchain based system helps the stakeholders to track and trace all stages in the life cycle of drug production and ensures that the drug is approved and in compliance with regulations. The system also helps to combat the entry of counterfeit and substandard drugs into the supply chain and enables monitoring of medicines to improve patient safety.
Stakeholders
1. Pharmaceutical Manufacturer: Manufactures the drug and submits the same for approval
2. Approving/Certifying Authority: Verifies the manufactured drug for compliance and approves the same if found compliant
3. Pharmacist: Stores and dispenses various approved drugs
4. Doctor: Verifies the drug approval certificate before prescribing the same to patients
5. Patient: Views the drug specifications
Drug Specifications: Registered drug manufacturer submits the samples of the manufactured drug for certification. Drug details along with the specifications are stored on blockchain so that they are never deleted and can be verified at any given instance of time in future.
Drug Certificate by Certification Bodies: The Certification Bodies can get the test details & test reports from Blockchain and PoE Blockchain, to verify the correctness of the data and issue an Approval Certificate. The certificate details are stored in PoE and Blockchain.
Drug Certificate Verification by Doctor and Patient: The doctor can verify the drug approval certificate before prescribing the same to the patients. Patients can also verify the authenticity of the drugs from immutable blockchain ledger and hence the system will be completely trustworthy.
Drug Testing: Authorized Testing Bodies fetch the drug details from the blockchain and test the samples against testing parameters and finally generate test reports. The generated test reports are sent to Proof-of-Existence (PoE) Blockchain and test details which include laboratory details and test parameters are also stored in Blockchain. The test reports stored in PoE & Blockchain provide a single source of truth across all stakeholders, along with immutable test reports.
About the FutureSkills Prime Programme:
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Written by C-DAC Hyderabad