With the growth of personalized medicine and biotechnologies, medicine therapy is now taken as the primary intervention for most illnesses and therefore ensuring that the right product is delivered to the right patient is primordial.
The World Health Organization estimates that approximately
Project Title
DrugAssure Tackling counterfeit drugs through Blockchain
Project Area of Specialization BlockchainProject Summary
The purpose of this project is to tackle the illegal sales and distribution of counterfeit drugs using blockchain technology. There have been innumerous cases of fatal occurrences pertaining to the health of the consumers countrywide. The major problem lies within the supply chain of these drugs, as most of the times the original drugs are replaced with fake ones packed in the original packing, hence, going unnoticed. Moreover, packaging of fake drugs in original casings acquired from trash has become a problem, which requires immense attention and needs to be redressed. Therefore, as an antidote, a blockchain technology called Drug Assure will be implemented in the drug delivery supply chain, regulating the process from the manufacturing lab to the consumer. This will ensure secured tracking and mitigated or eliminated tampering of drug delivery, hence, assuring the customer that the medicine purchased has come down through an authentic source. A collaboration with the “Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP)” is salient to proceed and expand our project by procuring data of authentic stakeholders i.e. labs, manufacturers and pharmacists, from the organization. We intend to develop a Progressive Web Application as an end product, which will be used by concerned authorities to access the drug blockchain.
Project Objectives
With the growth of personalized medicine and biotechnologies, medicine therapy is now taken as the primary intervention for most illnesses and therefore ensuring that the right product is delivered to the right patient is primordial.
The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 10%-15% of the pharmaceutical trading involves counterfeit drugs that are being sold on the internet, black market or directly to patients at their nearby pharmacy. This growing global scourge has serious and even dramatic consequences for the health of patients.
Pakistan has more than 100,000 merchants dispensing drugs illegally. In January 2012, in one incident alone 120 heart patients in Punjab Institute of Cardiology died because of counterfeit heart medication.
Counterfeit products are causing a lot of damage to economies, industries, consumer health and safety. Big companies like Getz, Searle, and Pfizer etc. are aware that they will incur revenue and reputational losses while also spending extra expense for regulations and brand protection if a solution to counterfeit drugs is not found.
The complexity of the pharmaceutical supply chain prevents pharmaceutical companies from ensuring complete and effective end-to-end traceability and product monitoring throughout the chain. Nevertheless, the rise of "Distributed Ledger Technologies" such as blockchain, can represent an important asset in flow management but also in the identification, authentication and traceability of health products throughout the supply chain.
Project Implementation Method
The solution that Drug Assure offers to this predicament is the use of blockchain technology in the drug delivery supply chain from the manufacturer to the consumer. When a batch of drugs is manufactured, a unique hash is generated against it in the form of a code, which is printed at the back of each product. That hash is then used to store relevant information about the drug in the blockchain database. Drugs are then transported to the vendor, then to the pharmacist, after which they will finally reach the consumer. Each time the product is moved, the stakeholder verifies the authenticity of the product by scanning the previously generated code, and their transaction is then added to the blockchain. Each new transaction added to a block is immutable and time-stamped to track the end-to end chain and ensure that the information is not modified through the delivery pipeline.
The end product is supposed to be a PWA (Progressive Web Application) which will be based on an open source blockchain network. The stakeholders which involve labs, manufacturers, vendors, pharmaceuticals and consumers will be given credentials after they sign up on our portal according to their roles.
The PWA will be hosted by a server, therefore, the application will require a constant internet connection to stay connected with the server. Users at the lab will be the ones who will be mining a single medicine as a block in the blockchain with all the necessary description related to that drug and they will be doing this through their portal. The timestamps will be punched on the medicine blocks by the other stakeholders through which a track of the whole supply chain will be stored in the blockchain database.
Since this is a data-centric application, it will need somewhere to store the data. The PWA will be communicating with the blockchain database whenever a transaction will be processed. The portal for the customer will only be able to retrieve the data, while other stakeholders can also add and modify the data. All of the database communication will take place over the Internet.
Benefits of the Project
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DrugAssure will be used by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) to achieve the goal of eliminating the vending and consumption of fake and unauthorized drugs in Pakistan.
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Our distributed ledger technology will offer legislative, operational and patient safety benefits for pharmaceutical supply chain management.
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All Lab Managers, Manufacturers, Vendors and Pharmacists of prescription drugs in the Pakistani market will be required to comply with DrugAssure, which will ensure equal transparency into tracking of drug as it moves along the supply chain.
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DrugAssure will be publicaly available to drug consumrers and would allow them to trace every drug product all the way back to the origin of the raw material used to make it.
Technical Details of Final Deliverable
The mobile application as well as the website that our system consists of, will initially allow a user to create their account on our blockchain. The user can either sign up as a lab manager, a manufacturer, a vendor, a pharmacist or a consumer. Each stakeholder account will have distinct features that will make their sign-up process different from others. For example, a consumer sign-up will not require any authentication process, whereas the remaining four will have one. Once a user signs up, using their mobile application or the website, a wallet will be generated against their account. This will confirm their entry into our blockchain.
The mobile application that will be used throughout the supply chain, will allow the lab manager to mine a block in our blockchain, and rest of the users can scan the QR code at the back of each drug and authenticate its origin.
There are five types of users that interact with the system: lab manager, drug manufacturer, vendor, pharmacist and customer. Each of these 5 users have different uses of the system, therefore the amount and type of access provided to them differs as well. A brief description their system requirements is as follows:
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Lab Manager will be the only user in the blockchain who will be allowed to mine a block against each drug. The manager will have rights to add a block as well as to update a block in the blockchain.
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Manufacturer comes next in our drug supply chain. The manufacturer’s main role is to provide a list of authorized vendors, and other than that, it can only scan the QR code at the back of each drug to confirm its source. This user has no right to add or update a block in the blockchain.
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Vendor is identified as a legal vendor before it can sign up, and this authentication is done against the list provided by the manufacturer previously. A vendor’s functionality only includes scanning of a drug’s QR code and verifying its source.
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Pharmacist is first verified as a legal drug supplier using the list of registered pharmacists that will be provided by DRAP. Once the sign-up successfully completes, the pharmacist will be able to scan the drug QR code and can start tracking the drug supply chain.
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Customer is the last user of our delivery pipeline. Customer sign-up needs to verification and any drug consumer can easily sign-up to make their account on our blockchain. Like others, once the sign-up finalizes, QR codes can be scanned using mobile application and drugs can be authenticated.
Final Deliverable of the Project Software SystemCore Industry MedicalOther Industries Legal , Health , Security Core Technology BlockchainOther Technologies Artificial Intelligence(AI), Cloud InfrastructureSustainable Development Goals Good Health and Well-Being for People, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Responsible Consumption and ProductionRequired Resources
| Item Name | Type | No. of Units | Per Unit Cost (in Rs) | Total (in Rs) |
| | | Total in (Rs) | 51408 |
| AWS Cloud services (part time) | Equipment | 168 | 306 | 51408 |