Today’s organ donation and transplantation systems pose different requirements and challenges in terms of registration, donor-recipient matching, organ removal, organ delivery, and transplantation with legal, clinical, ethical, and technical constraints. Therefore, an end to-end organ donation and transplantation system is required to guarantee a fair and efficient process to enhance patient experience and trust. We propose a private Ethereum blockchain based solution to enable organ donation and transplantation management in a manner that is fully secure, traceable, auditable, private, and trustworthy. We develop smart contracts that ensure the data provenance by recording events automatically. We present algorithms with their implementation, testing, and validation details. We evaluate the performance of the proposed solution by performing privacy, security, and confidentiality analyses as well as comparing our solution with the existing solutions. Key Words: organ, donation, private, confidentiality
Demand forecasting, supply acquisition in healthcare supply chains are significant concerns spanning various organizations and bodies, rendering a crucial backbone to medical services necessary for everyday living. A global pandemic resulting in critical demand for medications and vaccines was an eye-opener in the current era. The intrinsic complexity among the bodies involved in the supply chain results in a lack of data transparency, security, privacy, and reliable communication. The counterfeited drug is an outcome of such limitations that adversely affects a global population. Consecutively, fair allocation and distribution of drugs and vaccines to administer them to a global mass equally is also a significant concern. Blockchain as technology grants an essential platform to track and manage transactions among communicating parties in the supply chain using a peer-to-peer, secured, distributed ledger, removing the need for intermediaries or entrusted third parties. Most existing studies focus on tracking and tracing supply chain systems in a centralized manner, leading to transparency, authenticity, data privacy, and authenticity concerns in healthcare supply chains. In this article, we propose a FAIR blockchain-based approach deploying smart contracts leading to transparent traceability of data and transactions in the healthcare supply chain between the communicating parties We propose an approach that allows fair allocation and distribution of vaccines as per the demand generated from the global population. We present a system architecture and algorithm representing the communication between parties that governs our proposed approach. We have computed network performance based and blockchain based evaluation of the proposed system. We have calculated the communication and computation cost of 1152 bits and 12.6 ms respectively.
With the development of Internet technology, Internet technology provides a platform for charity to allow people to participate together. Currently, each charitable blood donation registration agency operates independently, donors need to fill in personal information multiple times to register and log in when they want to register with different institutions. The information is collected by various platforms, which increases the risk of personal information leakage. In order to protect the security of the personal information used by the user during registration, and relieve the user from the many troubles caused by the leakage of personal information. This article proposes a user registration and login method based on blockchain technology, through the construction of a alliance chain, the blockchain technology is integrated with the registration and login system. To ensure that the user’s information is kept confidential to the charity blood donation platform and use the mobile phone number to register in the alliance chain under the premise of hiding the user’s login application record, successful registration can log in to all platforms on the alliance chain. The alliance chain system issues unique identification numbers to the charitable blood donation platform nodes in the chain, and users use their accounts to post transactions to apply for login nodes, and generate zero-knowledge range proofs to hide login records during the application login process.
Owing chiefly to the lack of suitable technology solutions, India is experiencing both shortage and wastage of blood units. In addressing such a challenge, we explore the unique role of Blockchain and Internet-of-things technologies in the overall blood supply chain management as an appropriate technology solution. Our study employs an integrated Task-Technology Fit and Technology Acceptance Model to empirically test and identify key factors influencing the adoption intention of the Blockchain and Internet-of-things enabled system. With the need to preserve donor and recipient data integrity and data privacy, the respective state and national health departments strictly regulate blood banks. Accordingly, our study also explores the role of government in supporting and overseeing security concerns in the future adoption of the Blockchain and Internet-of-things technologies. Finally, a solution based on the Blockchain and Internet-of-things technologies to ensure the sufficient availability of blood units at the national level is envisioned.
Purpose Vaccine safety is a major issue in the world. Blockchain technology is the right solution to this worldwide problem. The impact of introducing blockchain technology on the operational efficiency of the vaccine supply chain is unclear. Therefore, from the perspective of game theory, this paper aims to construct a vaccine supply chain model consisting of a vaccine manufacturer, a vaccine traceability service platform based on blockchain technology and a vaccination unit to discuss its pricing and coordination. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzes the pricing and coordination of the vaccine supply chain based on blockchain technology, compares the decision-making of fixed charge scenario and proportional charge scenario and reveals the impact of blockchain on the vaccine supply chain. Findings Results demonstrate that the revenue-sharing contract can coordinate the vaccine supply chain when the proportion of revenue sharing meets certain conditions. The fixed charge scenario is more beneficial to the vaccine supply chain than the proportional charge scenario. The introduction of blockchain technology increases the total profit, consumer surplus and social welfare of the vaccine supply chain. Therefore, the operational efficiency of the vaccine supply chain is improved. Originality/value This study not only provides important support for enterprises to adopt blockchain technology but also provides some guidance for decision-makers to implement scientific and feasible vaccine supply chain management schemes.
Purpose Some studies and reports have recently suggested using blockchain technology to improve transparency and trust in humanitarian supply chains (HSCs). However, evidence-based studies to display the utility and applicability of blockchains in HSCs are missing in the literature. This paper aims to investigate the key drivers and barriers of blockchain application to HSCs and explore whether evidence could support that the application of blockchain improves transparency and trust in HSCs. Design/methodology/approach This paper puts forward a two-stage approach to explore the blockchain application in HSCs: an initial exploration of humanitarian practitioners and academicians interested in blockchain through focus group discussions; semi-structured interviews with practitioners involved at the UK Department for International Development's Humanitarian Supply Blockchain pilot project. Findings First, we found that main drivers include accountability, visibility, traceability, trust, collaboration, time efficiency, reducing administrative work and cross-sector partnership. Main barriers, however, are composed of engagement issues, lack of technical skills and training, lack of resources, privacy concerns, regulatory problems, pilot scalability issues and governance challenges. Second, evidence from our case study revealed the blockchain application could have added value to improve visibility and traceability, thus contributing to improve transparency. Concerning trust, evidence supports that blockchain could enhance both commitment and swift trust in the pilot study. Practical implications Our study contributes to a more understanding of added values and challenges of blockchain application to HSCs and creates a perspective for humanitarian decision-makers. Originality/value This study provides the first evidence from the actual application of blockchain technology in HSCs. The study discovered that it is still less evident in many humanitarian organizations, including medium- and small-sized nongovernmental organizations, that they engage in a direct deployment of in-house or customized blockchain-based HSC. Instead, these actors are more likely to indirectly use blockchain in HSCs through a private commercial partner.
S. Adarsh, Shon G. Joseph, Franklin John, M. B. Lekshmi · 5 authors
Tracing the vaccines from the manufacturing labs till the health centers administering doses to child is a cumbersome process with the involvement of large number of stakeholders and with multiple levels of book-keeping mechanisms. This work primarily focuses on the problem of traceability of immunization vaccines from manufacturing facility, through the distribution mechanisms in cold storage network and the vaccine handling/administration facilities, till the end consumer in the Indian context. The proposed research named, Immunochain is a state-of-the-art big data and blockchain technologies powered, mobile/web-enabled vaccine traceability solution for immunization programs in India. It is vendor neutral, scalable, replicable, and reusable across different immunization programs in any geographical context. Experiments and pilot testing on Indian geography indicates that the proposed approach outperforms some of the existing approaches in vaccine traceability and record management systems.
Eisa Shaheen, Mohamed Abdl Hamed, Walaa Zaghloul, Eman Al Mostafa · 9 authors
Charities face a difficult funding environment, mainly because charities are not highly transparent. Day over day It became more difficult to know whether donations are reaching the right place, or taking another course, such as financing suspicious campaigns, terrorist projects, etc. As a result, donors lose faith in these organizations, leading to a halt to interactions with charitable organizations. This makes it more difficult for charities to raise money at a great cost. This research proposed a solution to the mentioned problem using Blockchain technology, a decentralized database that provides security, transparency, and lower funding cost by eliminating the presence of third parties between donors and charities. A new track donation model was proposed which introduced several new participants that control the process of donation and remove suspicion of the charity. All donations can be tracked in Blockchain, allowing donors to know where and how their money is being used. The proposed model was implemented using Hyperledger composer then it was tested to obtain a live full track of a donation process. All donations are made using smart contracts, which allow donors to know exactly when and how their donations will be received. The Blockchain track donation system results in time-saving, reducing the cost of donation, and reduces the risk of reaching suspicious campaign donations or terrorist projects. A website was created as a facilitator for users for ease of use of the proposed system.
To support effective supply chain management (SCM) is a challenging issue for healthcare sectors. In healthcare, the requirements of blood to be fulfilled on demands are always directly or indirectly connected to its supply chain. For that, an effective blood supply chain system is required in which blood relevant information will be traceable at each stage of the blood supply (e.g., from donor to blood recipient), with trust and safety in testing, storage, and distribution phases and to keep the privacy of each donor. This study uses a Blockchain Ethereum platform as a solution to leverage traceability in the blood donation supply chain (BDSC). Blockchain is a highly efficient, decentralized, and peer-to-peer distributed technology deploys to provide end-to-end traceability, safety, immutability, and security in the BDSC ecosystem. As a part of this study, a role-based smart contract solution is used to define the access per each role, which therefore assists to ensure traceability and security of information in the BDSC ecosystem.
Diana Hawashin, Dunia J. Mahboobeh, Khaled Salah, Raja Jayaraman · 7 authors
Today’s a large number of blood donation management systems fall short in providing traceability, immutability, transparency, audit, privacy, and security features. Also, they are vulnerable to the single point of failure problem due to centralization. In this paper, we propose a private Ethereum blockchain-based solution to automate blood donation management in a manner that is decentralized, transparent, traceable, auditable, private, secure, and trustworthy. The proposed solution stores non-critical and large data off-chain using the decentralized storage of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). We present the system architecture, sequence diagrams, entity-relationship diagram, and algorithms to briefly explain the working principles of our blood donation management solution. We evaluate the performance of our solution in terms of efficiency and effectiveness through performing security analysis. We make our smart contract code publicly available on Github1.
Abstract A blockchain is a smart electronic database, distributed to all users, immutably tracking every transaction that has ever taken place between nodes on a network. The technology is being used by some nonprofits to address various operational challenges, including attaching automated conditions to charitable donations facilitated by programmable “crypto‐giving” platforms. Drawing from analysis of technical documents provided by active crypto‐giving projects, this review considers how these platforms enable radical shifts in sectoral power relations through “surveillance philanthropy”. This algorithmic surveillance ensures project funding fully reflects the interests of donors, while potentially restricting nonprofits in meeting the dynamic and complex needs of project beneficiaries. The paper considers the benefit trade‐offs from crypto‐giving platforms in three areas of utilization: (a) new forms of donor engagement and fundraising, (b) new tools for organizational governance, and (c) novel provision of development assistance. Despite the possible efficiency and transparency benefits of crypto‐giving platforms, more research and practitioner engagement is required to ensure the sector's funding is secure and sustainable, without entailing significant risks for proposed beneficiaries.
Given the short shelf life of blood products and a decrease in donor population, hospitals endeavor to achieve an equilibrium between shortage and outdating. Though collaborating and sharing blood among hospitals will result in a reasonable reduction in surplus and deficit, health regulations strongly discourage blood exchange among hospitals due to traceability issues. With the recent advancement in peer-to-peer networking, blockchains have been used for record transactions in businesses with the advantage of being timestamped. This research is one of the first to address the blood inventory management problem using the blockchain technique by forming a collaborative network of hospitals and exchanging blood in that system, enabling transparency and traceability. A novel clustering technique, called multi-criteria clustering (MCC), using a mixed-integer programming approach, is proposed to form the blockchain network that bases its clustering decisions on a number of conflicting criteria, such as collaboration preference, geographical distribution, hospital size, and operational heterogeneity. Subsequent to this, a mathematical model is developed to identify purchasing strategies for each hospital in a blockchain network, given the opportunity to share blood among other hospitals in that network. This two-phase approach is tested using hospital settings in a neighborhood of a metropolitan city. Sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the blockchain system with respect to change in cost, shelf life, demand distribution, and coefficient of demand variation. Based on the results, it can be concluded that, for all settings, the proposed blockchain network significantly outperforms the current system with independently acting hospitals, in spite of the additional blockchain development and operating expenses that are incurred.
The scarcity and exigency for blood and organs has created many discrepancies in current approaches. These have created the criteria for malpractices such as organ trafficking and black market selling. This research presents a solution with a secured-smart blood and organ donation web developed system, allowing both patients and healthcare providers to access information about the blood and organ processing records. The database would be managed using the Blockchain technology which could be only accessed by authorized users. Finally, tracking all registered donors, the proposed system generates a smart identity developed by Ethereum Smart Contract (ESC). System predicts blood demand for the future ten years using Linear Regression Model with 0.998 of high R-squared accuracy value. This reduces shortages and wastage of blood. Also, using global positioning system and K-Nearest Neighbors Machine Learning algorithm, the system finds the best matches among donors and seekers according to the nearest location. Further, the system will automatically send questionnaires for registered users to identify and evaluate their awareness and issues about organ donation. Overall, this study aims for a secured and transparent web application. Thus, it facilitates an innovative and a productive blood donation and organ transplantation process in Sri Lankan healthcare sector.
Mark Gaynor, Janet E. Tuttle‐Newhall, Jessica Parker, Arti Patel · 5 authors
This study aims to review current issues regarding the application of blockchain technology in health care. We illustrated the various ways in which blockchain can solve current health care issues in three main arenas: data exchange, contracts, and supply chain management. This paper presents several current and projected uses of blockchain technology in the health care industry. We predicted which of these applications are likely to be adopted quickly and provided a supply chain example of tracking the transportation of organs for transplantation.
In recent years, vaccine incidents occurred around the world, which endangers people’s lives. In the technical respect, these incidents are partially due to the fact that existing vaccine management systems are distributively managed by different entities in the vaccine supply chain. This architecture makes it relatively easy to modify or even delete the vaccine circulation data maliciously, which makes tracing problematic vaccine hard and identifying the responsibility for a vaccine accident hard. To solve these issues, this article presents a blockchain-based solution to protect the whole process of vaccine circulation. We first propose a model to supervise the vaccine circulation process by incorporating existing regulatory practices. Then, we propose a blockchain-based tracing system to implement this model. The proposed system takes the blockchain as a global, unique, and verifiable database to store all the circulation data. Through data insertions and queries on the global and unique database, the proposed system achieves the protection of vaccine circulation. We also implement a proof-of-concept prototype of the proposed system. Experimental results confirm that the proposed system is beneficial.
As the population structure changes due to lower fertility rates and rapid aging, the blood supply available for blood transfusion decreases and demand increases. In most countries, blood management information systems, led by national institutions, operate centrally. However, existing centralized blood management systems have limitations in that they lack detailed blood information and, moreover, information is not reflected in real time. To solve this problem, this paper presents an innovative blood cold chain system based on blockchain technology. The proposed system aims to increase information visibility by recording the overall information on the blood supply and providing detailed blood information such as blood consumption and disposal to the distributed ledger. In addition, this paper proposes direct blood transactions between medical institutions in cases of emergency. Currently, blockchain technologies are being actively employed in the supply chain management and medical fields in addition to financial systems. Particularly, private blockchain techniques with limited participants are relatively fast and reliable, making them suitable for B2B (Business-to-Business) transactions. Therefore, the proposed system is based on the architecture of Hyperledger Fabric, a private blockchain technology implemented by the Hyperledger Composer tool. Information in the proposed blood cold chain system cannot be forged or tampered with, and information recorded and shared in real time is kept transparent. In addition, allowing for B2B blood transaction in special circumstances will minimize the blood supply time and enable patients to be transfused quickly. Moreover, the surplus blood of medical institutions will be used to increase the usage rate relative to the supply amount.
Ludwig Trotter, Mike Harding, Chris Elsden, Nigel Davies · 5 authors
We demonstrate Smart Donations, a blockchain powered mobile platform and application that facilitates a novel model for real-time, condition-based donations using smart contracts. By leveraging the benefits of blockchain technology, Smart Donations empower donors to (i) attach conditions dependent on real-world phenomena to a donation, (ii) store funds in a secure, transparent and decentralised escrow, and (iii) automatically release funds to charitable organisations or particular projects once the donor's conditions have been met. We believe this mobile prototype demonstrates a compelling new approach to charitable giving that leverages dynamic pledge controls and considers new trust relationships between donors and NGOs.
The organ donation system in the United States is centralized and difficult to audit by the general public. This centralized approach may lead to data integrity issues in the future. The Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (OPTN) was built and maintained by a non-governmental organization called the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) under its proprietary UNet(SM) umbrella platform. This platform is made up of proprietary closed source software and does not provide the general public easy access to the organ transplant data for auditing. This study investigates the feasibility, challenges, and advantages of a blockchain-based OPTN. A prototype of a blockchain-based OPTN was created using the Hyperledger Fabric framework. The policies and guidelines issued by the United States Department of Health and Human Services for UNOS and the OPTN were used as the basis of this prototype. Four factors were identified to have a direct effect on the performance of this system, viz. max batch time out, max block size, endorsement policy, and transaction rate. Additionally, two variants of the blockchain chaincode were also developed. The first variant performed the organ-candidate matching inside the blockchain (Scheme A), and the second variant performed it outside the blockchain (Scheme B). Analysis of these data showed that Scheme A outperformed Scheme B in all experiments for write-operations. However, the read operations remained unaffected by any of the experiment variables in the given environment. Based on these results, it is recommended to perform the organ-candidate matching on the blockchain with the max batch time out close to the transaction rate.