Review Article
Year: 2022 | Month: September | Volume: 12 | Issue: 9 | Pages: 144-148
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijhsr.20220919
Blockchain Technology: A Novel Approach to Pharmaceutical Supply Chain
Hrishikesh Samjiskar1, Shubham Salvi1, Siddhi Rawool1, Minal Ghante2, Bhaskar Vaidhun3, Preeti Kulkarni4
1Student, Gahlot Institute of Pharmacy, Mumbai University, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.400703
2Associate Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Quality Assurance, Sinhgad Technical Education Society’s, Smt. Kashibai Navale College of Pharmacy (Kondhwa) Pune, Maharashtra, India. 411048
3Principal, Gahlot Institute of Pharmacy, Mumbai University, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.400703
4Professor and Head, Department of Quality Assurance, Gahlot Institute of Pharmacy, Mumbai University, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.400703
Corresponding Author: Dr. Preeti Kulkarni
ABSTRACT
The pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) contains various nodes including manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, pharmacies, hospitals, and patients. Thus increasing the complexity of the process and full of loopholes which increases the chances of counterfeiting medicine. This leads to an increase in the need to develop an immutable, trustworthy, transparent and accountable system, more advanced than PSC. The main loophole in the current PSC system is drug changes ownership over every transaction making it hard to trace before it reaches the customer. In the current system, nodes do not exchange information, manufacturing doesn't know what happens to the product, and visibility to regulatory authorities is near zero, recalls are complicated and costly. Problems like traceability, visibility, and security in the current drug delivery systems are explained in this review paper, and methods to solve them are elaborated in the same. Drugs produced by manufacturers can be traced from manufacturing to delivery to the patient and after the administration for survey purposes also. The proposed system will also make it possible to retrieve and store data of patients for future statistics. By using blockchain we can store data of transactions and only certified personnel will be allowed to join and push data on the blockchain.
Key words: Blockchain, counterfeiting, supply chain, drug traceability