Background

The supply of drugs to the Government hospitals involves the procurement of drugs from the Manufactures / Suppliers and ensuring its transport to the designated warehouses located at different districts and facilitating the supply to hospitals periodically. The patients are supplied these drugs on the prescription by the doctors.
Specifically, the Government of Karnataka procure and supply free drugs for the patients across the state to enable them get treatment on time without any shortage of drugs. Around 2,911hospitals are covered under this scheme and every year more than 300 crores worth of medicine is procured and supplied to these hospitals through 26 Warehouses.

Challenges in this system

Poor Visibility - The consumer has no way of ascertaining the genuineness of the drug, its manufacturer, the quality and expiry as there is scope of spurious drugs entry into the system. Hence, lack of visibility raises issues like counterfeits, drug shortages - Patients, retailers and regulators don’t know where drugs have been originated

Difficulty in tracking and tracing - The stakeholders of the supply chain maintain their own registers that are not accessible to others. This results in difficulty in tracing and tracking the drugs in the complete supply chain. It is cumbersome process to collect the data required to produce the history of all the transactions made so far leading back to the manufacturer.

Drug Logistics Chain

First Example picture

Drug Logistics Chain is the drug supply chain established using the Block chain Technology. The complete transactions of drug supplies is stored with every stake holders in his register (ledger). Whenever someone supplies or purchases or issues the drug, every other stake holder gets notified and recorded in his register. Block chain ensures complete surveillance, as there’s no centralized authority that could manipulate the record. Therefore, whenever anyone ledger is hacked/compromised, the other ledgers will be intact and can be verified easily. Hence, the transactions in this chain are secured, tamper proof and immutable.

Features of Drug Logistics Chain

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Drug Logistics Chain records all the transactions that are taking place in supply chain of the purchase and distribution of the drugs by the government. These transactions are stored in the shared/distributed manner with all the participating stakeholders with the consensus between the them. This eliminates the need for dependency on the third party. The certificates are linked and stored with cryptographic security so that they are immutable and traceable. The linking of the blocks in the blockchain ensures that they cannot be tampered with. The certificates are trustable as they can be verified across the participating stakeholders.

  • Secured
  • Trusted
  • Immutable
  • Traceable
  • Verifiable

Benefits of Drug Logistics Chain

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Drug Logistics Chain provides the trustable, immutable and traceable transactions. It can be used by the various hospitals and citizens to verify the original suppliers of the drugs and quality testing of the drugs.

  • Transparent - Patient can check the manufacturer, expiry details & standard of the batch of medicine before consumption.
  • Tracking - It facilitates tracking the movement of drug from producer to the patient. Apart from ensuring timely supply it also eliminates the chances of counterfeiting.
  • Traceable - It not only results in integrated supply chain information but also maintains traceable records of distributed drug.
  • Tamper Proof - It ensures that the transactions are not manipulated and easily verifiable.
  • No dependency on third party – No need not have to depend on the institutes or suppliers to check the quality of the drugs.

Users of Drug Logistics Chain

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Drug Logistics Chain provides the mechanism for the citizens and hospitals to verify quality of the drugs being supplied or issued. It also helps in tracking and tracing the supply of the drugs. Thus, eliminating the need to depend upon the third party to check out the quality. It also drastically saves the time for verification and promotes the paperless verification.

  • Citizens/Patients
  • Hospitals
  • Government

Contents in Drug Logistics Chain

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The Drug Logistics Chain contains the transactions of the supply of the drugs from procurement to the citizens. As and when the transaction takes place, the stake holders will send the signed transactions to the Drug Logistics Chain, and Drug Logistics Chain will link these transactions and build the chain and will store securely in the Drug Logistics Chain.

Drug Logistics Chain system is integrated with the existing online Supply Chain Management System of Government of Karnataka (Aushada) to record the transactions in the block chain . The transfer of the drug from one entity in the supply chain to the other is recorded in the Drug Logistics Chain. The Drug Logistics Chain network also executes business logic called as smart contracts to ensure agreement between the stakeholders.

Events such as recording the result of the quality check can result in “freezing” the drug ,& recalling them to ensure that non-standard drugs are not issued to the patients is implemented. Checks and balances are built in to ensure incorrect entries are not made is also incorporated.

The following transactions are recorded in the Drug Logistics Chain:

  • Procurement
  • Warehouse Inward
  • Warehouse Outward
  • Quality testing
  • Hospital Inward
  • Hospital consumption

While the Aushada system implements the business logic for the drug supply system, the Drug Logistics Chain provides the Ausdhada system a platform that gives immutability, provenance and finality to the data stored in the block chain.