Blockchain Medledger: Hyperledger fabric enabled drug traceability system for counterfeit drugs in pharmaceutical industry

Counterfeit drugs are one of the most severe threats to the pharmaceutical industry. World Health Organization (WHO) highlights that nearly 1035% of the drugs, i.e., one out of ten medicines produced in the least developing countries, are counterfeit and have serious side effects on human lives. The upsurge in online and Internet-based pharmacies has made the safety and security of the drug supply chain process more intricate and complicated. This research proposes a new and novel track and trace blockchain-enabled Medledger system that leverages the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform using chaincodes (smart contracts). The proposed Medledger system helps to efficiently and securely execute drug supply chain transactions in a fabric enabled private permissioned distributed network of different pharmaceutical stakeholders. Our proposed traceability solution diminishes the need for a trusted centralized authority, intermediaries and provides transaction records, enhancing efficiency and safety with high integrity, reliability, and security that reduces the likelihood of meddling with stored data on the Medledger. Chaincodes are designed, coded, and implemented using sequence diagrams to govern and control the interaction amongst the participating stakeholders in the drug supply chain ecosystem. The proposed system perpetually stores and records all activities, events, and transactions on the blockchain's immutable Medledger linked with peer-to-peer decentralized file systems such as IPFS, Swarm, filecoin, etc. for storing and providing maximum transparency and traceability. We provide an insight into some of the ongoing implementation challenges for the hyperledger fabric platform. Finally, we discuss open challenges that serve as future research directions to improve the drug traceability solutions further.

Automated summary

Counterfeit drugs pose a serious threat to the pharmaceutical industry, with approximately 10% of drugs produced in the least developing countries being counterfeit. The proposed blockchain-enabled Medledger system leverages smart contracts to securely and efficiently execute drug supply chain transactions, reducing the need for centralized authorities and intermediaries. Storing all activities and transactions on an immutable blockchain ledger ensures transparency and traceability while addressing ongoing challenges in implementing the hyperledger fabric platform.