Enhancing Medication Traceability

Abstract

The surge in counterfeit drugs threatens global health and safety through pharmaceutical supply chains. This chapter delves into medication traceability, scrutinizing emerging technologies like RFID, IoT, and blockchain to tackle this issue. Despite interest in supply chain management and blockchain, challenges persist with data privacy, transparency, and authenticity in traditional track-and-trace systems. Blockchain emerges as a decentralized solution, enhancing traceability with smart contracts that ensure data authenticity, sidestep intermediaries, and maintain an immutable transaction record. Integrating blockchain can curb fraud, optimize inventory, cut courier costs, build stakeholder trust, and expedite issue identification. Stressing robust traceability, the researcher is continuously monitoring for environmental and economic gains. In this chapter, the authors have augmented existing literature by empirically assessing blockchain's qualitative attributes in pharmaceutical supply chains, suggesting improved system integration and a broader scope for future endeavors.