An Anti-Counterfeiting Architecture Ensuring Authenticity and Traceability for Expensive Medicines Using QR Codes
Sk. Yeasin Kabir Joy, Md. Nafees Imtiaz Ahsan, Nuzhat Tabassum Progga, Aloke Kumar Saha, Mohammad Shahriar Rahman, Abdullah Al Omar · 2023
Medicines have been one of the indispensable things in our life. Due to the ease of replication process and absence of authentication procedures, this industry currently attracts adversaries interested in producing fake medicines. The counterfeiting problem can be solved by adding authentication and traceability to the medicine supply chain. In order to increase the usefulness of networked connections, the Internet of Everything (IoE) connects together people, processes, and data. Recently, blockchain is getting involved in the IoE, where it has demonstrated success, notably in healthcare applications. Blockchain offers security features like transparency and immutability for the IoE environment. This chapter presents an easy-to-implement anti-counterfeiting architecture that will provide authenticity and traceability for expensive medicines using QR codes, web technology, and blockchain. QR codes are used for adding traceability information and checking the authenticity of the medicines. Two prototypes are developed using a centralized database and hyperledger fabric blockchain. Moreover, the elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) encryption method is used. Blockchain is introduced to eliminate the single point of failure of the centralized database and for adding more security features such as data integrity and traceability. Last, both the prototypes are analyzed separately and compared with each other.