The Innovation of Chain of Custody in Pharmaceutical Domain using Robotic Process Automation and Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Counterfeit medicine is one of the biggest problems in the pharmaceutical industry today. Chain of custody is the answer to this – chain of custody means that every drug delivery unit must be internationally and uniquely identified with a serial number and monitored at every step of the supply chain. However, with millions and millions of the products in the global economy, this is incredibly complex. This work follows a very specific approach - eliminating the information security risks associated with manual data handling. This leads to finding the best solutions and practices to close the identified gap. According to the literature review, the author has developed a conceptual solution to provide pharmaceutical companies with knowledge on how to solve the above-mentioned problems in laboratory sampling process.The machine-to-blockchain (M2BC) solution mainly aims to address the information security risks associated with manual data entry in the laboratory information system (LIS) and publish the data on the blockchain network. The author proposes the implementation of both a mobile app and a desktop software that communicate with each other and share data in real time. The idea behind this is to eliminate the human errors associated with manual data processing. The artifact also aims to increase the accuracy of results due to data quality, while reducing the time required for the overall process....