BlockColdChain: Vaccine Cold Chain Blockchain

TL;DR

This paper introduces BlockColdChain, a blockchain-based system designed to securely track vaccine cold chain conditions, ensuring tamper-proof temperature records from manufacturing to vaccination, thereby reducing vaccine loss and increasing public trust.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel blockchain solution for vaccine cold chain management, integrating IoT temperature monitoring and smart contracts for unalterable record keeping.

Findings

System is feasible with smart contract implementation

Provides verifiable vaccine temperature history

Reduces vaccine loss due to temperature mishandling

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based cold chain technology for vaccine cooling track. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the death of millions of people. An important step towards ending the pandemic is vaccination. Vaccines must be kept under control temperature during the whole process, from fabrication to the hands of the health professionals who will immunize the population. However, there are numerous reports of vaccine loss due to temperature variations, and, currently, people getting vaccinated have no control if their vaccine was kept safe. Blockchain is a technology solution that can provide public and verifiable records. We review the World Health Organization (WHO) cool chain and Blockchain technology. Moreover, we describe current IoT temperature monitoring devices and propose Blockcoldchain to track vaccine cold chain using blockchain, thus proving an unalterable vaccine temperature history. Our experimental results using smart contracts demonstrate the system's feasibility.