A Blockchain-Based Framework For Secure, Transparent, and Cost-Efficient Vaccine and Drug Supply Chain Management: Design, Implementation, and Comparative Performance Evaluation

Abstract

Fake medicines and unclear drug distribution continue to affect global health outcomes. Because traditional drug supply networks rely on centralized structures, they are vulnerable to hacking, lack real-time tracking capabilities, suffer from cumbersome validation procedures, and often do not talk well to one another. In response, blockchain has been touted as a revolutionary alternative providing a decentralized model that can preserve records securely and validate transactions. But despite growing interest in blockchain applications within drug logistics, few studies have explored limitations including increased transaction fees, limited spatial resolution, poor scalability, missing support for 2D coding authentication, and slow transaction processing speeds.This paper provides a blockchain-enabled model for the drug and vaccine supply chain that combines Ethereum smart contract management, QR-coded product authentication, the storage of blockchain transactions as compressed smart contract code, and geocoding drug location data from Google Maps to enhance scalability, security, and accountability of drug traceability. A comparison of the structure of the presented drug supply chain with that of current market and literature solutions (for example Hyperledger Fabric, VagLedger, DrugLedger, systems with IPFS, and traditional blockchain drug supply chain methods) provides greater insight into system advantages. Results obtained via experimentation have confirmed enhanced performance of the proposed model over existing drug supply chain solutions: the model requires smaller overheads for transaction processing (save 18%-25%), has a more rapid verification time, and provides more accurate traceability results, providing a more transparent model for tracking. Real-time monitoring performance using the proposed methodology is further supported by a lower latency in performing QR- authenticated transaction verifications, requiring 47 seconds vs. 8. Research has demonstrated that incorporating blockchain technology with QR based data access authentication and optimized storage methodologies will be a deployable solution for managing 21st century supply chains.