Detecting Fake Drugs using Blockchain

Abstract

The existing supply chain for the pharmaceutical industry is obsolete and lacks clear visibility over the entire system. Moreover, the circulation of counterfeit drugs in the market has increased over the years. According to the WHO report, around 10.5% of the medicinal drugs in lower / middle income countries are fake and such drugs may pose serious threats to public health, sometimes leading to death. Keeping these threats in mind, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based model to track the movement of drugs from the industry to the patient and to minimize the chances of a drug being counterfeit. The reasons for using blockchain technology in our work include its immutability property and easy tracking of an entity in the blockchain. Through this proposed model, the manufacturer would be able to upload the details corresponding to a drug, after which it will be sent for approval to the Government. Thereafter, hospitals and pharmacies, based upon their requirements, can request the approved drugs. In the future, if a patient wants some medication, then he or she has to request it on the blockchain network. The request will be sent to the nearest hospital/pharmacy and thereafter, the patient can collect the medication. To implement this model, we have used Hyperledger fabric due to the presence of many auto-implemented features in it. Our implementation of the proposed blockchain based model highlights that the model can successfully detect any drug being counterfeit. This will be beneficial for the users getting affected with counterfeit drugs. Moreover, with the proposed model, we can also track the movement of the drug beginning from the manufacturer right up to the patient consuming that drug. Index Terms: Blockchain, Counterfeit Drugs, Drugs Tracking, Fake Medicines, Health Care.