International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET)
2395-0056
Volume: 10 Issue: 03 | Mar 2023
2395-0072
Blockchain Technology-Based Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Security
Ved Kimbajune1, Rujay Taywade2, Gaurav Nandanwar3 , Anjay Kumar4
Students,, Dr. D.Y Patil College of Engineering, Akurdi, Pune Maharashtra, India.
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Abstract - The production and distribution of counterfeit
medicines is an urgent and increasingly important problem
worldwide, especially during the pandemic. Poor supply
chain systems in the pharmaceutical industry are one of the
causes of counterfeit medicines. The ownership of medicines
passes from the manufacturer to the wholesaler, distributor
and pharmacist before it reaches the customer, making
traceability difficult. In this article, we compared existing
proposed architectures for blockchain and iot-based supply
chain management systems. The system is implemented using
a hyper-ledger fabric that ensures data exchange, storage,
transparency and traceability across all links in the supply
chain. The Ethereum architecture, on the other hand,
leveraged the power of smart contracts to manage
interactions between senders and receivers. Finally, this
research mainly focuses on improving pharmaceutical safety
through the most efficient architecture and reducing manual
operations in the supply chain.
Key Words: Counterfeit medicines, supply chain systems,
pharmaceutical industry, Hyperledger fabric, Ethereum
Architecture, smart contracts
1.INTRODUCTION
The supply chain passes through all the various
checkpoints associated with the assembly and distribution
of products. Today, the supply chain spans 4,444 hundreds
of steps and numerous geological regions. Data issues and
obstacles along every path make it difficult to follow a
reliable structure in the supply chain. Furthermore,
considering his supply chain in the pharmaceutical
industry, the security of the process flow becomes very
important. Counterfeit medicines may contain more
harmful substances, such as floor wax and the corrosive
boron .In some cases, it may turn out to be rodent poison
.These can cause hypersensitivity, which can lead to serious
injury or even death. To improve supply chain traceability
and security, blockchain technology, due to its unique
properties, is creating an interesting research area that
provides productive answers to the currently identified
gaps. Simply put, blockchain can be defined as a
transmitted information base shared and used by
decentralized organizations, also known as peer-to-peer
networks. When components are connected to a
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blockchain, they cannot be changed, making the blockchain
an immutable record of past movements, which helps
improve overall performance and security. In summary,
the features that make blockchain an ideal solution are: a)
immutability, b) transparency, c) information verification,
and d) cryptographic security. Blockchain technology
mainly provides two types of services: a) Ethereum and b)
Hyperledger. These provide a basis for exploring questions
of responsibility. At the time a product is exchanged, the
transaction is recorded and stored on the blockchain for
authenticity and verification. Foundation is currently being
established about building an organization. Raw materials
provided by suppliers are tested in a laboratory and
subsequent testing and manufacturing cycles are initiated.
The main purpose of this document is to convey a detailed
implementable architecture of the supply chain, based on
both services provided by the blockchain. Both methods
are compared based on various parameters that are
important for the entire cycle. To address this critical issue,
there is growing interest in leveraging cutting-edge
technologies such as blockchain and the internet of things
(iot) in the pharmaceutical supply chain. This article
focuses on the application of blockchain technology to
improve the security of pharmaceutical supply chains.
Blockchain provides a decentralized, tamper-proof ledger
that ensures transparency and traceability throughout the
supply chain process. In this context, this study compares
different architectures proposed for blockchain and iot-
based supply chain management systems. This
implementation leverages Hyperledger fabric, a blockchain
framework that provides a secure and efficient foundation
for data sharing and storage. Additionally, this study
explores Ethereum's architecture and highlights the use of
smart contracts to manage interactions between various
entities within the supply chain. The main objective of this
research is to build a robust and secure pharmaceutical
supply chain using the most efficient blockchain
architecture. The proposed approach aims to protect the
integrity of medicines by reducing manual operations and
improving security measures, thereby ensuring safe and
authentic medicines reach end users. This article addresses
the technical aspects of these architectures and highlights
their potential to revolutionize pharmaceutical supply
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Volume: 10 Issue: 03 | Mar 2023 www.irjet.net
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chain management and contribute to the overall security of
global healthcare systems.
2. Blockchain
Blockchain can be defined as a peer-to-peer network with a
distributed database.Each asset transaction is verified
through cryptography and rules defined in smart contracts
between the blockchain network's participants before
being added to the persistent record (the "ledger") and
proof of violation.Vazirani et al., 2019; agbo et al., 2019;
kumar & tripathi, 2019).).This technology has gained great
importance and wide acceptance in recent years, based on
his two features of .The first feature is guarantees of
immutability (all records are written forever and cannot be
changed unless someone simultaneously obtains control of
at least 51% of the nodes (niranjanamurthy et al, (2018))),
transparency ( data logging).The blockchain system is
transparent to each node, and each of these nodes can
further update the data, making the data transparent and
reliable), integrity (without any resource permission)
security (protection of personal data; unauthorized access
or malicious attacks by third parties; misuse of the data);
and traceability of native data, i.E.Data stored on the
blockchain.(Traceability).Second characteristic of is its
decentralized nature (there is no need to rely on a central
node, and data can be recorded, stored, and updated on
multiple systems).H.No centralized trusted third party is
required to verify transactions between peers in the
network (abujamra & randall, 2019; banerjee et al., 2018;
zhang, et al., 2018; galvez, et al., 2018).Blockchain
functions as a distributed peer-to-peer technology that uses
a ledger to record all authorized digital transactions
(christidis & devetsikiotis, 2016).Additionally, blockchain
ledgers are created using consensus algorithm
mechanisms, cryptographic signatures, and hash chains,
thus providing reliable storage capabilities.All transactions
are governed by smart contract rules, whose approval is
based on consensus among blockchain peers.All peers in a
blockchain (private, public, or consortium) have a copy of
the smart contract and ledger (tapscott & tapscott,
2016).Therefore, as it is a peer-to-peer network, there is no
centralized trusted third party and a consensus algorithm
approves transactions (zhang et al., 2018; zhou et al., 2018).
S.Additionally, private blockchains are considered
centralized networks because they are completely
controlled by one organization.In contrast, only a pre-
selected group of nodes among organizations participate
in the consensus process of the consortium
blockchain.Consortium blockchains are partially
decentralized because they are built by multiple
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organizations and only a small fraction of nodes are
selected to determine consensus.Consortium blockchain
can be used in many business applications.・Animal
psychology free site results each block in the network is
responsible for validating the next transaction because a
hashing algorithm is used to create the hash code used in
the last transaction.This sequential dependency creates a
chain of blocks ().Validating a transaction requires
consensus among the peers in the network.If you try to
change the standard of the previous block, there will be no
consensus and the transaction will fail .This consensus
process ensures the immutability, traceability, and security
of data on the blockchain network.
2.2 Healthcare supply chain
Healthcare is defined by cambridge dictionary (https:
//dictionary.Cambridge.Org/, , accessed 31 july 2021) as "a
set of services provided by a state or organization for the
treatment of sick people" it has been. Therefore, it becomes
an activity/business that provides medical services.
Hospitals, clinics, and medical communities are part of the
health care system. Such systems may be public, private, or
non-profit. The health sector can be thought of as an
institution that provides indirect or direct services to
promote or maintain the health status of individuals
(gomes et al., 2016).Quality of health care is defined as the
degree to which health services for individuals and
populations increase the likelihood of desired health
outcomes and care, consistent with current expertise
(gomes et al., 2016).Supply chain management (SCM) is a
key business integration process between end users and
suppliers that provides services, products, and valuable
information to create value for customers and stakeholders
(lambert & cooper, 2000).In this study, the research on
logistics and supply chain management targets the
healthcare sector therefore, this study refers to the medical
supply chain and it is important to explain the importance
of producing goods that are transported through multiple
intermediate medical institutions. The importance of
reliably transporting products and services from suppliers
to customers has become increasingly complex due to
globalization and market expansion.(Azzi et al., 2019)., In
the healthcare sector, logistics and inventory management
reduce product costs, improve operational efficiency, and
prevent security threats (krahenbuhl-melche et al., 2007;
westbrook et al., 2011; keers et al., 2013).).For agee et
al.(2019) reported that approximately 6% of hospitalized
patients experienced side effects during their
hospitalization from 1990 to 2003.Therefore, there are
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international initiatives and guidelines to improve patient
safety in terms of safe medication practices, proposed and
supported by logistics (lotta et al., 2019)
completeness OR accuracy)).This search string was created
based on the research area of this study (blockchain and
healthcare). Chain).This string was customized to perform
the search in each database.This study considered the
period from january 2015 to august 2022.

3. Research methodology
To enable a transparent and reproducible scientific
literature search, this study followed the preferred Scintefic data Raw results Results of first
source selection
reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses
(PRISMA) protocol (moher et al., 2009). The first step in the
Emerald insight 900 74
systematic mapping process was to define a research
question based on the objectives of this work the second IEEE xplore 94 26
step was to define a scientific database to search the 4,444
articles. Table 1 shows the selected databases. The criteria Pubmed 2048 260
for selecting these databases was the importance of digital
databases for the healthcare and information Sciencedirect 1249 314
technology/engineering fields to cover the most relevant Taylor and 879 92
scientific literature on blockchain and healthcare. francis

Web of science 165 123

Source Url Type
Total 5335 889

Web of science Https://clarivate.Com/pDigital journal library

roducts/web-of-science/ The fourth step was to search the database for bibtex and
RIS files.
Emerald insight Https://www.EmeraldinDigital journal library
sight.Com/

Pubmed Https://www.Ncbi.Nlm.Digital journal library
Nih.Gov/pubmed/
Taylor and francis Https://taylorandfrancisDigital journal library
.Com/
IEEE xplore Https://ieeexplore.Ieee.Digital journal library
Org/xplore/home.Jsp
Sciencedirect Https://www.SciencedirDigital journal library
ect.Com/
The third step was to define the search terms and search
strings that would be used to perform the search in the
selected databases.The final search string used was
“((blockchain OR “smart contracts” OR ledger) AND
(healthcare OR medical OR hospital) AND (logistics OR
“supply chain” OR pharmacy) AND (security OR
The fifth step is to extract all bibtex and RIS files generated
from the database after searching each search result into
the classified mendeley® reference management software
(https: //www.Mendeley.Com, 2022 retrieved august
22nd).
Science by data source. As shown in table 2, the number of
articles (raw results) returned from each scientific data
source is .At first, the producer will make a QR code
containing the manufacturer's title, fabricating date, expiry
date, and exchange number. The exchange number will
offer assistance in recognizing the pharmaceutical on the
blockchain. At that point the merchant will check the QR
code and check for legitimacy. When the shipment takes off
the distributor's capacity, the wholesaler ought to include
his signature points of interest within the medicine's
record. The wholesalers, retailers, and drug stores will
carry out the same assignments at their conclusion. By
recording the exchanges at each arrange of the supply
chain, following and traceability can be made conceivable
within the drug supply chain. Each square features a hash,
timestamp, and the hash of the past square. Past hash keeps

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Volume: 10 Issue: 03 | Mar 2023
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from altering squares in the middle. Along these lines, the
organization is changed, direct, and changeless. Blockchain
in brief could be a dispersed changeless record that keeps
up the uprightness of the organization by fulfilling
assertion through calculations like confirmation of work or
prove of specialist or possess custom understanding
calculations. Moreover, there are two sorts of blockchain –
open and private which have a few disadvantages. These all
provide a base to address the duty issue. Directly, at
anything point items will exchange hands it'll be recorded
and put absent on blockchain for validity and affirmation.
By and by, our base believe will be established on amassing
organizations. Unrefined materials given to them by the
supplier will be attempted
Decentralization or centralization?
Honestly, why wouldn't you trust the government or the
department of health to store your data securely?
Blockchain essentially means that facilities can it states that
it should be decentralized by not establishing it. Regardless,
we are not particularly inspired by decentralization .When
you use a layer like , you're essentially letting the hub and
the excavator do the work for you, without delving too
deeply into centralization and decentralization.Therefore,
if the solution is integrated or distributed, both are
considered equivalent.
Transparency is it easy to exchange so that anyone can see
it on the blockchain?
This is an important factor.Security and privacy in fact, the
system is maintained consistently and can even track the
inventory chain to detect who swapped genuine drugs for
fake ones.
4. Supply Chain Environment
Markov Decision Process (MDP) provides both the
theoretical foundation and a structured framework for
learning with well-defined objectives, achieved through
interactions with a digital environment. Within a specified
number of time steps, a reinforcement learning (RL) agent
engages in conversations with its surrounding world .
4.1 Raft algorithm:
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Raft is a calculation for handling duplicate logs of structures
..Raft enters into an agreement by selecting the first
approved leader to be , at which point he will give the leader
full responsibility for handling the newly created
protocol.The leader reviews protocol section from the
customer, repeats it to other workers, and advises the
worker if it is safe to apply protocol section to the state
machine. Leader allows better management of mocked
protocols.The leader can choose where in the protocol to
insert new he sections without having to talk to various of
his employees, and the information is passed from the
leader to the various employees in a simple
design.Masu.The leader may fail or become detached from
another worker.N this case, another leader will be elected.
4.2 Raft basics:
Raft basics - A raft group consists of a small number of
workers. 5 is a common his number that allows the system
to endure his two times her disappointment.At any given
time, each worker will be in one of her three states: leader,
follower, or achiever.In normal activities, there is actually a
leader, and all other employees are supporters.Followers
are far away: they do not issue requests of their own
volition, but basically respond to his requests from
managers and applicants.The leader handles all inquiries
from customers (if a customer contacts a supporter, the
supporter forwards this to the leader).Third country
applicants will be used to elect another leader.Raft
confidently divides the time into his lengths.The terms are
given consecutive integer numbers of .Each term begins
with a political decision by someone aspiring to for
leadership.If a candidate wins a political election, that
candidate will assume her leadership position for the
remainder of her term.In certain situations, 4,444 political
races result in a split vote.In his situation, his term ends
without a leader.
4.3 Leader election:
Raft uses a heartbeat component to trigger a political race
for leader .Once a worker has started, as long as he gets his
5 worth of rpcs from the leader or his juniors, he is ready.
The leader sends intermittent pulses (his appendentries
RPC that does not send protocol passages) to all supporters
to maintain power. If supporters do not receive
communications for an indefinite period of time, in the case
of a so-called political race break, at that point supporters
assume that there is no possible leader and start a political
race for another. To start a political election, a supporter
adds his current term to his and moves to the contested
state.At this point, it votes for itself and issues request vote
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RPC corresponding to the individual workers in the group.
Candidate remains in this state until one of three things
happens: (a) he wins the political contest, (b) another
worker emerges as leader, or (c) the time frame passes
without a winner; these results are discussed separately in
the following text.An aspiring candidate wins a policy
decision if he receives votes from the majority of workers
across his corresponding term group.Each employee takes
as a starting point all the things that the applicant considers
within a certain period of time. The larger portion ensures
that at most one competitor can win the political race in a
given time period (the "election security " property).When
a competitor wins a political race, he or she becomes the
leader. It then sends a heartbeat message to all other
employees to establish 's position and prevent new
decisions. Rising star is close to votes, but he can receive
append entries RPC from another worker who calls himself
leader.
If the leader's term (reminiscent of his RPC) is at least as
long as the applicant's current term, then his descendants
will recognize the leader as genuine. Goes to the advocate
nation. If the rpc's duration is less than the competitor's
current duration, at that point the ascender rejects the RPC
and continues in the competitor's state. A third possible
outcome is that neither of 's competitors wins or that loses
to the political decision.
4.4 Log replication:
Protocol replication - once a reader is selected, we begin
customizing it to customer requirements. Each customer
request includes a job that is executed by a replicated state
machine .The leader appends the command to the log as a
separate section, at which point append entries issues his
corresponding RPC to each of the other workers to
duplicate the section. Once the section is safely replicated,
the leader applies his section to state his machine and
returns her aftermath of that execution to the customer. If
the support crashes, runs slowly, or loses network he
packets, the manager repeats the append entries RPC again
until finally all servers save all log he passages ( even after
responding to the client).Each log passage stores the state
machine command along with the reservation number
when the passage was received from the reader
terminology numbers within protocol passages are used to
identify irregularities between protocols and to guarantee
some of the characteristics. Each log section also has a
record number that identifies its position within the
log.The reader selects when to protect for applying the
protocol path to the state machine .Such sections are called
dedicated.Raft guarantees that the transmitted passage is
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stable and will eventually be executed by the entire
available state machine.Log passage is sent when the leader
who created the passage replicates it among most
workers.This of his also contains all previous sections in the
leader's log, including texts from previous leaders.There
are some nuances to the application of this standard after
a change in leadership, and further evidence that the
meaning of this responsibility is solid.A manager monitors
his most important records that he knows need to be
submitted, with the goal that other employees will
eventually discover them, and his appendentries RPC
(count) in the future.Memorize his list for this.・Animal
psychological fortune-telling free site result ・animal
psychological fortune-telling free site result
5.Results
Blockchain platforms such as ethereum and gcoin are
highly scalable but do not offer an identity management
system.Additionally, we also use proof-of-work consensus
technology, which is A computationally intensive
process.Hyperledger fabric provides A scalable blockchain
platform that not only features A identity management
system, but also leverages A single approach to consensus
based on pbft (byzantine fault tolerance
algorithm).Hyperledger is suitable for building A
decentralized platform for tracking and traceability in the
pharmaceutical supply chain.Therefore, we compared
existing proposed blockchain architectures and iot-based
supply chain management systems.Implemented using
hyperledger fabric, the system ensures data sharing,
storage, transparency, and traceability across all links of
the supply chain.On the other hand, ethereum architecture
leverages the power of smart contracts to manage her
interactions between senders and receivers.Basically,
research is mainly focused on increasing the safety of
medicines and reducing manual operations in the supply
chain through the most efficient architecture.
The review is divided into three different parts: positive
impact and consensus.A dataset was created from multiple
sources, including ratings and reviews provided by users,
using a python web crawler and souppack.Once the
crawling step was completed, the dataset contained a total
of 215,063 drug reviews, and the number of drugs that
were the focus of the analysis was set to 541.A total of
63,376 predefined targets were considered during the data
collection phase.Our machine learning models have been
extensively developed and tested on this dataset.The model
receives customer ratings and reviews through the
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proposed framework client application and continuously learning algorithms, resource allocation, etc.Minimizing
learns how to provide informed drug latency and optimizing response time is critical to
recommendations.After training and integration with a maintaining a seamless user experience during system
blockchain framework via a restful API, the system expansion.
provides disease-specific medication
recommendations.This follows on from the framework's
first recommendations for disease-specific
medicines.Figure 3 shows the accuracy of the SCM system
and its ability to provide correct recommendations and
effectively manage the supply chain.Increased accuracy
indicates increased accuracy and reliability of the system,
leading to more successful results.F-measure in figure 4
combines precision and recall to provide a comprehensive
performance measurement.A higher F value indicates a
better balance between precision and recall, highlighting an
improved ability of the system to provide accurate drug
recommendations without missing relevant
recommendations.Figure 5 represents accuracy,
quantifying the proportion of accurate drug
recommendations out of all suggestions and showing the
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