ABSTRACT
Transparency at any level in supply chain is an essential need to be ensured enough that everything is going in the right direction and no falsified goods are entering in the chain and to be accurately aware of the market’s demand to fulfill the supply for the sake of avoiding any shortage. A supply chain basically is a network that combines all the components of the business cycle for the flow of various goods and services from one point to another. Along with this, India is the biggest exporter of falsified medicines. These falsified medicines are nothing but a result of poor existing supply chain, along with many other issues. To maintain flexibility, traceability, visibility, and transparency in supply of medicines, a new system needs to be introduced using advanced technologies like IoT, AI, and blockchain. There are several issues in the existing system such as lack of visibility in the supply chain, which causes problems like poor inventory management, and lack of knowledge about market’s demand, all these issues result in drug shortages. Another loophole is lack of tracing ability in present supply chain in pharma industry every component is working; on own part separately this offers a poor visibility. Along with this, it is also necessary for a consume1r to get the medicine in its original form, as some drugs are temperature sensitive so requires desired controlled temperature and hence can’t be transported using normal transportation. For this, we can use IoT-enabled vehicles and then store that data as a block of blockchain network. All these problems can be tackled by using blockchain technology as a major part of solution along with IoT-enabled vehicles for cold chain transportation. Blockchain technology will keep an eye on all transactions going in the supply chain of medicines. So in this chapter, we will be focusing on what are the major problems that exist in a medicine supply chain, and in which way blockchain can be used as a cure for all these issues.
