Blockchain platform for COVID-19 vaccine supply management
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In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid roll-out of a vaccine and the implementation of a worldwide immunization campaign is critical, but its success will depend on the availability of an operational and transparent distribution chain that can be audited by all relevant stakeholders. In this paper, we discuss how blockchain technology can be used for assuring the transparent tracing of COVID-19 vaccine registration, storage and delivery, and side effects self-reporting. We present such system implementation in which blockchain technology is used for assuring data integrity and immutability in case of beneficiary registration for vaccination, eliminating identity thefts and impersonations. Smart contracts are defined to monitor and track the proper vaccine distribution conditions against the safe handling rules defined by vaccine producers enabling the awareness of all network peers. For vaccine administration, a transparent and tamper-proof side effects self-reporting solution is provided considering person identification and administrated vaccine association. A prototype was implemented using the Ethereum test network, Ropsten, considering the COVID-19 vaccine distribution tracking conditions. The results obtained for each on-chain operation can be checked and validated on the Etherscan, demonstrating various aspects of the proposed system such as immunization actors and safe rules registration, vaccine tracking, and administration. In terms of throughput and scalability, the proposed blockchain system shows promising results.
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