Multi-MedChain: Multi-Party Multi-Blockchain Medical Supply Chain Management System

TL;DR

Multi-MedChain is a scalable multi-party, multi-blockchain framework that enhances security, transparency, and compliance in healthcare supply chains, especially during crises like COVID-19.

Contribution

It introduces a novel three-layer multi-party, multi-blockchain architecture utilizing smart contracts for medical supply chain management.

Findings

Demonstrated end-to-end traceability and transparency.

Implemented and evaluated the proposed system.

Addressed privacy and regulatory compliance challenges.

Abstract

The challenges of healthcare supply chain management systems during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for an innovative and robust medical supply chain. The healthcare supply chain involves various stakeholders who must share information securely and actively. Regulatory and compliance reporting is also another crucial requirement for perishable products (e.g., pharmaceuticals) within a medical supply chain management system. Here, we propose Multi-MedChain as a three-layer multi-party, multi-blockchain (MPMB) framework utilizing smart contracts as a practical solution to address challenges in existing medical supply chain management systems. Multi-MedChain is a scalable supply chain management system for the healthcare domain that addresses end-to-end traceability, transparency, and collaborative access control to restrict access to private data. We have implemented our proposed system and report on our evaluation to highlight the practicality of the solution. The proposed solution is made publicly available.