Vaccine Supply Management using Blockchain

Abstract

In late 2019, we witnessed the apparition of the COVID-19 virus. It first appeared in Wuhan, China and due to people traveling worldwide, it spread globally. The world went into a global lockdown because of its exponential spread and high mortality rates. Social distancing measures, crises in the economy, and healthcare posed many challenges for scientists, researchers, and healthcare workers. To try to combat this situation, multiple vaccines were tried, tested, and created in a very short amount of time. Therefore, a robust yet transparent supply chain system is very crucial in ensuring an efficient vaccination campaign. We propose a blockchain-based vaccination supply chain system to manage the registration, storage and distribution of the vaccines. Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed ledger that records all the transactions happening between the nodes in the network. The data is stored in the ledger in the form of blocks that are linked to each other by hashes, this makes tampering with the data virtually impossible. Blockchain properties will provide a distributed system along with greater privacy, transparency, and authenticity. Smart contracts deployed will help in monitoring and tracking the proper vaccine distribution conditions against the rules and regulations given by the authorities. The tamperproof nature of blockchain would ensure the supply of proper distribution of only authentic vaccines in a timely manner and traceability of the supply chain will help in increasing the people’s trust in the vaccination campaign.