Blockchain-Based E-Pharmacy to Combat Counterfeit Drug Transactions

Abstract

A World Health Organization (WHO) study in 2017 found that 1 in 10 medical products circulating in low-income and middle-income countries are either substandard or falsified. This cynical trade is becoming increasingly difficult to track owing to the advent and growth of technology that enables illicit organizations all over the world to carry out their transactions via the Internet. The pharmaceutical industry is in dire need of a transparent, reliable, and tamper-proof strategy through which medical products can be tracked from supplier to consumer, in order to identify counterfeit products both at the point of sale and at the point of purchase. In order to achieve this and combat this rampant issue, this project proposes the establishment of a decentralized e-pharmacy, powered by blockchain. The overarching aim is to devise a mechanism through which every transaction of a product through the e-pharmacy is recorded in an immutable and irrefutable manner, thereby reducing fraudulent activity. This would effectively enable legitimate tracking of pharmaceutical transactions by employing immutable smart contract transactions using cryptocurrency, on an Ethereum framework. This system also provides the pharmaceutical vendors as well as the end users with a unique hexadecimal identification sequence, which serves as their “address” on the blockchain. This address would definitively certify the authenticity of both transacting parties when a product is purchased. Leveraging the transparency and security of the transactions that transpire through the blockchain network, the proposed solution could fill in the noticeable gaps in the current system, potentially saving the lives of countless people who are negatively impacted by the circulation and consumption of counterfeit drug circulation.