Blockchain-based Supply Chain Traceability for COVID-19 personal protective equipment

Omar, Ilhaam A. and Debe, Mazin and Jayaraman, Raja and Salah, Khaled and Omar, Mohammed and Arshad, Junaid (2022) Blockchain-based Supply Chain Traceability for COVID-19 personal protective equipment. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 167. ISSN 0360-8352

[img] Text
final manuscript_PPE_paper.pdf - Accepted Version
Restricted to Repository staff only until 5 February 2025.

Download (1MB)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted many industries, in particular the healthcare sector exposing systemic vulnerabilities in emergency preparedness, risk mitigation, and supply chain management. A major challenge during the pandemic was related to the increased demand for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), resulting in critical shortages for healthcare and frontline workers. This is due to the lack of information visibility combined with the inability to precisely track product movement within the supply chain, requiring a robust traceability solution. Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger that ensures a transparent, safe, and secure exchange of data among supply chain stakeholders. The advantages of adopting blockchain technology to manage and track PPE products in the supply chain include decentralized control, security, traceability, and auditable time-stamped transactions. In this paper, we present a blockchain-based approach using smart contracts to transform PPE supply chain operations. We propose a generic framework using Ethereum smart contracts and decentralized storage systems to automate the processes and information exchange and present detailed algorithms that capture the interactions among supply chain stakeholders. The smart contract code was developed and tested in Remix environment, and the code is made publicly available on Github. We present detailed cost and security analysis incurred by the stakeholders in the supply chain. Adopting a blockchain-based solution for PPE supply chains is economically viable and provides a streamlined, secure, trusted, and transparent mode of communication among various stakeholders.

Item Type: Article
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2022.107995
Dates:
DateEvent
1 February 2022Accepted
5 February 2022Published Online
Uncontrolled Keywords: Ethereum, Cybersecurity, PPE Supply Chain, Traceability, COVID-19
Subjects: CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-01 - computer science
Divisions: Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment > School of Computing and Digital Technology
Depositing User: Junaid Arshad
Date Deposited: 14 Feb 2022 11:34
Last Modified: 22 Mar 2023 12:00
URI: https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12785

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Research

In this section...