A Blockchain-Based Framework for Transparent and Accountable Management of Medical Supply Chains Using Smart Contracts

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-713-2_10How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Blockchain; Smart Contract; Supply Chain; Healthcare; Truffle

Abstract

The global medical supply chain, particularly for critical items such as vaccines and pharmaceuticals, faces challenges including low transparency, counterfeit products, slow recall processes, and inadequate tracking of usage and waste. Centralised systems struggle to give an immutable, auditable trail from manufacturer to end consumer. This paper proposes a decentralised framework using blockchain to automate and secure the medical supply chain lifecycle. In this paper, we created and deployed a decentralised platform with four main smart contracts on an EVM-compatible blockchain: (1) registration.sol, for permissioned onboarding of entities with a regulatory authority: manufacturers, distributors, and hospitals; (2) LotProductionCommitment.sol, which allows for a demand-driven production model by permitting manufacturers to commit to producing a lot after obtaining sufficient pre-committed interest from distributors and hospitals, thus minimising excess production and waste; (3) DeliveryAndConsumption.sol, which tracks delivery, receipt, and consumption of medical packages to ensure chain of custody; and (4) WasteAssessment.sol, which records usage and disposal on a transparent ledger, supporting regulatory compliance and environmental impact assessment. We used the Truffle suite and tested our deployed system on the local Ganache blockchain. Overall, our work demonstrates how blockchain's characteristics of immutability, transparency and decentralisation can provide a trustless environment in which to conduct business. Our framework will help reduce both the risk of fraud and the risk of counterfeit products while helping improve operational efficiency through automated process checks and a verifiable audit trail of all transactions and changes to product states from the time that an order is committed until the time that it is finally disposed of as waste. This research can be considered a first step toward the development of more resilient, accountable, and efficient medical supply chains in the future.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Pooja Singh
AU  - Vipin Kr. Kushwaha
AU  - Shiva Gupta
AU  - B. Sharan
AU  - Murari Kumar Singh
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/25
TI  - A Blockchain-Based Framework for Transparent and Accountable Management of Medical Supply Chains Using Smart Contracts
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computing Technology and Artificial Intelligence (COMPUTATIA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 134
EP  - 144
SN  - 2589-4919
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-713-2_10
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-713-2_10
ID  - Singh2026
ER  -