Drug traceability system based on semantic blockchain and on a reputation method
Authors: 
Petar Kochovski, Maroua Masmoudi, Redouane Bouhamoum, Vlado Stankovski, Hajer Baazaoui, Chirine Ghedira, Dan Vodislav, Thamer MecharniaAuthors Info & Claims
Abstract
Drug traceability is a critical process involving monitoring and validation of the origin, quality, and safety of pharmaceutical products throughout their supply chain to prevent the distribution of counterfeit, substandard, or expired drugs that could harm patients. Traditional centralized solutions for drug traceability, relying on intermediaries and central authorities, introduce risks of data manipulation, corruption, and single points of failure. This work presents the design and implementation of a novel solution for decentralized drug traceability based on blockchain technology and on a reputation mechanism that operates on top of a trustworthy decentralized knowledge base, thus integrating three core technologies: blockchain, semantic, and reputation methods. Blockchain technologies ensure transparent and secure supply chain processes while providing a trustworthy estimation of the reputation of supply chain participants. Semantic technologies address drug data heterogeneity by ensuring interoperability and creating mappings between various data sources, including verifying the identities of the various users. Additionally, the reputation mechanism promotes transparency and accountability, as stakeholders contribute feedback on drug quality, authenticity, and reliability. This fosters a culture of trust and reliability, offering the drug supply chain an effective tool for continuous improvement and informed decision-making based on aggregated feedback, ultimately enhancing overall quality and safety throughout the distribution network. The design and implementation of the system, along with several evaluations, show the feasibility of the new semantic blockchain system in real-world scenarios and the improvement of the entities with a high reputation score. Our solution is more trustworthy, discouraging fraudulent activities as security is based on the various properties included in the semantic model.
References
[1]
Zhang H, Hua D, Huang C, Samal SK, Xiong R, Sauvage F, Braeckmans K, Remaut K, and De Smedt SC Materials and technologies to combat counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals: current and future problem tackling Adv. Mater. 2020 32 11 1905486
[2]
Kordestani A, Oghazi P, and Mostaghel R Smart contract diffusion in the pharmaceutical blockchain: the battle of counterfeit drugs J. Bus. Res. 2023 158
[3]
Masmoudi, M., Mecharnia, T., Bouhamoum, R., Baazaoui Zghal, H., Ghedira, C., Stankovski, V., Vodislav, D.: A semantic blockchain-based system for drug traceability. In: Proceedings of the 27th international database engineered applications symposium, pp. 115–118 (2023)
[4]
Nofer M, Gomber P, Hinz O, and Schiereck D Blockchain. Bus. Inf Syst. Eng. 2017 59 3 183-187
[5]
Wazid M, Das AK, Shetty S, and Jo M A tutorial and future research for building a blockchain-based secure communication scheme for internet of intelligent things IEEE Access 2020 8 88700-88716
[6]
Lassila O, Hendler J, and Berners-Lee T The semantic web Sci. Am. 2001 284 5 34-43
[7]
Gruber TR Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing? Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud 1995 43 5–6 907-928
[8]
Abu-Salih B, Al-Qurishi M, Alweshah M, Al-Smadi M, Alfayez R, and Saadeh H Healthcare knowledge graph construction: A systematic review of the state-of-the-art, open issues, and opportunities J. Big Data 2023 10 1 81
[9]
Saha A, Mukhopadhyay J, Sarkar S, and Gattu M Biointmed: integrated biomedical knowledge base with ontologies and clinical trials Med. & Biol. Eng. & Comput. 2020 58 10 2339-2354
[10]
Lakshen G, Janev V, and Vraneš S Arabic linked drug dataset consolidating and publishing Comput. Sci. Inf. Syst. 2021 18 3 729-748
[11]
Ouf S A proposed architecture for pharmaceutical supply chain based semantic blockchain Int. J. Intell. Eng. Syst. 2021 14 3 31-42
[12]
Solanki, M., Brewster, C.: Epcis event-based traceability in pharmaceutical supply chains via automated generation of linked pedigrees. In: International semantic web conference, pp. 82–97 (2014). Springer
[13]
Adsul, K.B., Kosbatwar, S.: A novel approach for traceability & detection of counterfeit medicines through blockchain. Int. J. Curr. Eng, Technol (2020)
[14]
Bocek, T., Rodrigues, B.B., Strasser, T., Stiller, B.: Blockchains everywhere-a use-case of blockchains in the pharma supply-chain. In: 2017 IFIP/IEEE symposium on integrated network and service management (IM), pp. 772–777 (2017). IEEE
[15]
Abbas, K., Afaq, M., Ahmed Khan, T., Song, W.-C.: A blockchain and machine learning-based drug supply chain management and recommendation system for smart pharmaceutical industry. Electronics 9(5) (2020)
[16]
Panda, S.K., Satapathy, S.C.: Drug traceability and transparency in medical supply chain using blockchain for easing the process and creating trust between stakeholders and consumers. Pers. Ubiquit. Comput., pp. 1–17 (2021)
[17]
Rai BK Bbtcd: blockchain based traceability of counterfeited drugs Health Serv. Outcome Res. Methodol. 2023 23 3 337-353
[18]
Shkembi K, Kochovski P, Papaioannou TG, Barelle C, and Stankovski V Semantic web and blockchain technologies: Convergence, challenges and research trends J. Web Semant. 2023 79
[19]
Rojas, H.E.U.: A more pragmatic web 3.0: Linked blockchain data. (2017). https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:53604326
[20]
Cano-Benito, J., Cimmino, A., García-Castro, R.: Towards blockchain and semantic web. In: International conference on business information systems, pp. 220–231 (2019). Springer
[21]
Przytarski, D.: Using triples as the data model for blockchain systems. In: BlockSW/CKG@ ISWC (2019)
[22]
Le-Tuan, A., Hingu, D., Hauswirth, M., Le-Phuoc, D.: Incorporating blockchain into rdf store at the lightweight edge devices. In: International conference on semantic systems, pp. 369–375 (2019). Springer, Cham
[23]
Cano-Benito, J., Cimmino, A., García-Castro, R.: Benchmarking the efficiency of rdf-based access for blockchain environments. In: SEKE, pp. 554–559 (2020)
[24]
Sopek, M., Gradzki, P., Kosowski, W., Kuziski, D., Trójczak, R., Trypuz, R.: Graphchain: a distributed database with explicit semantics and chained rdf graphs. In: Companion proceedings of the the web conference 2018, pp. 1171–1178 (2018)
[25]
Tomaszuk, D., Kuziński, D., Sopek, M., Swiecicki, B.: A distributed graph data storage in ethereum ecosystem. In: International conference on the economics of grids, clouds, systems, and services, pp. 223–231 (2021). Springer
[26]
García, R., Cediel, A., Teixidó, M., Gil, R.: Copyrightly: Blockchain and semantic web for decentralised copyright management. In: International Conference on the Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services, pp. 199–206 (2021). Springer
[27]
García, R., Gil, R.: Social media copyright management using semantic web and blockchain. In: Proceedings of the 21st international conference on information integration and web-based applications & Services, iiWAS 2019, Munich, Germany, December 2-4, 2019, pp. 339–343. ACM, (2019).
[28]
Li, J., Pandey, V., Hendawi, R.: A blockchain-based personal health knowledge graph for secure integrated health data management. In: 2023 IEEE symposium on computers and communications (ISCC), pp. 1–7 (2023).
[29]
Meier, P., Beinke, J.H., Fitte, C., Schulte To Brinke, J., Teuteberg, F.: Generating design knowledge for blockchain-based access control to personal health records. IseB 19, 13–41 (2021)
[30]
Baqa, H., Truong, N.B., Crespi, N., Lee, G.M., Le Gall, F.: Semantic smart contracts for blockchain-based services in the internet of things. In: 2019 IEEE 18th international symposium on network computing and applications (NCA), pp. 1–5 (2019). IEEE
[31]
Chondrogiannis E, Andronikou V, Karanastasis E, Litke A, and Varvarigou T Using blockchain and semantic web technologies for the implementation of smart contracts between individuals and health insurance organizations Blockchain Res. Appl. 2022 3 2
[32]
Bandara, K.Y., Thakur, S., Breslin, J.: Enrichment of blockchain transaction management with semantic triples. In: 2020 IEEE international conference on blockchain (Blockchain), pp. 188–195 (2020). IEEE
[33]
Ibáñez, L.-D., Fryer, H., Simperl, E.: Attaching semantic metadata to cryptocurrency transactions (2017)
[34]
Masmoudi, M., Lamine, S.B.A.B., Karray, M.H., Archimede, B., Zghal, H.B.: Semantic data integration and querying: a survey and challenges. ACM Computing Surveys (2024)
[35]
Saak AE Traceability and reputation in supply chains International Journal of Production Economics 2016 177 149-162
[36]
Debe M, Salah K, Jayaraman R, and Arshad J Blockchain-based verifiable tracking of resellable returned drugs IEEE Access 2020 8 205848-205862
[37]
Arshad J, Azad MA, Prince A, Ali J, and Papaioannou TG Reputable-a decentralized reputation system for blockchain-based ecosystems IEEE Access 2022 10 79948-79961
[38]
Monrat AA, Schelén O, and Andersson K A survey of blockchain from the perspectives of applications, challenges, and opportunities Ieee Access 2019 7 117134-117151
[39]
Shin DD Blockchain: The emerging technology of digital trust Telematics Inform. 2019 45
[40]
Khan SN, Loukil F, Ghedira-Guegan C, Benkhelifa E, and Bani-Hani A Blockchain smart contracts: Applications, challenges, and future trends Peer-to-peer Netw. Appl. 2021 14 2901-2925
[41]
Al-Breiki H, Rehman MHU, Salah K, and Svetinovic D Trustworthy blockchain oracles: review, comparison, and open research challenges IEEE Access 2020 8 85675-85685
[42]
Breidenbach, L., Cachin, C., Chan, B., Coventry, A., Ellis, S., Juels, A., Koushanfar, F., Miller, A., Magauran, B., Moroz, D., et al.: Chainlink 2.0: Next steps in the evolution of decentralized oracle networks. Chainlink Labs 1, 1–136 (2021)
[43]
Sporny, M., Longley, D., Sabadello, M., Reed, D., Steele, O., Allen, C.: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0 Core architecture, data model, and representations (2022). https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/
[44]
Naji, M., Masmoudi, M., Zghal, H.B., Guegan, C.G., Stankovski, V., Vodislav, D.: Semantic-based data integration and mapping maintenance: Application to drugs domain. In: ICSOFT, pp. 469–477 (2022).
[45]
Mecharnia, T., Bouhamoum, R., Masmoudi, M., Baazaoui, H., Guegan, C.G., Stankovski, V., Vodislav, D.: Identification of counterfeit drugs based on traceability ontology and blockchain. In: International congress on information and communication technology, pp. 715–722 (2023). Springer
[46]
walt.id: Identity by walt.id. https://docs.walt.id/. [Accessed 7 Sep 2024] (2024)
[47]
Veramo: Veramo v6.0.0. https://veramo.io/docs/basics/introduction. [Accessed 7 Sep 2024] (2024)
[48]
web3.js Docs. https://docs.web3js.org/. [Accessed 19 Apr 2024]
[49]
Buterin V et al. Ethereum white paper. GitHub repository 2013 1 22-23
[50]
Mihailo, B., Sandeep, N., Amit, C., Wenxuan, D.: Whitepaper — polygon.technology.https://polygon.technology/papers/pol-whitepaper. [Accessed 19 Apr 2024]
[51]
Kochovski P, Gec S, Stankovski V, Bajec M, and Drobintsev PD Trust management in a blockchain based fog computing platform with trustless smart oracles Futur. Gener. Comput. Syst. 2019 101 747-759
[52]
Gec S, Stankovski V, Lavbič D, and Kochovski P A recommender system for robust smart contract template classification Sensors 2023 23 2 639
[53]
Masmoudi M, Lamine SBAB, Zghal HB, Archimede B, and Karray MH Knowledge hypergraph-based approach for data integration and querying: Application to earth observation Futur. Gener. Comput. Syst. 2021 115 720-740
[54]
GraphDB 10.6 documentation — graphdb.ontotext.com. https://graphdb.ontotext.com/documentation/10.6/. [Accessed 19 Apr 2024] (2024)
[55]
Apache Jena - Apache Jena Fuseki — jena.apache.org. https://jena.apache.org/documentation/fuseki2/. [Accessed 19 Apr 2024] (2024)
[56]
Naji, M., Masmoudi, M., Zghal, H.B., Guegan, C.G., Stankovski, V., Vodislav, D.: Semantic-based data integration and mapping maintenance: Application to drugs domain. (2022)
[57]
Seebacher, S., Maleshkova, M.: A model-driven approach for the description of blockchain business networks. In: Proceedings of the 51st hawaii international conference on system sciences (2018)
[58]
Node.js v22.0.0 documentation. https://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/. [Accessed 19 Apr 2024] (2024)
[59]
Flask documentation. https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/3.0.x/. [Accessed 19 Apr 2024] (2024)
[60]
Kambilo, E.K., Zghal, H.B., Guegan, C.G., Stankovski, V., Kochovski, P., Vodislav, D.: A blockchain-based framework for drug traceability: Chaindrugtrac. In: Proceedings of the 37th ACM/SIGAPP symposium on applied computing, pp. 1900–1907 (2022)
[61]
Owlready2 documentation. https://owlready2.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html. [Accessed 19 Apr 2024] (2024)
[62]
Gudgeon, L., Moreno-Sanchez, P., Roos, S., McCorry, P., Gervais, A.: Sok: Layer-two blockchain protocols. In: Financial Cryptography and Data Security: 24th International Conference, FC 2020, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, February 10–14, 2020 Revised Selected Papers 24, pp. 201–226 (2020). Springer
[63]
Boyens, J., Smith, A., Bartol, N., Winkler, K., Holbrook, A., Fallon, M.: Cybersecurity supply chain risk management practices for systems and organizations. NIST SP 800-161r1 (2022)
[64]
Hylender, C.D., Langlois, P., Pinto, A., Widup, S.: 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report. https://enterprise.verizon.com/resources/reports/dbir/. [Accessed 7 Sep 2024] (2024)
[65]
Organization, W.H.: Substandard and falsified medical products. https://shorturl.at/6nL6j. [Accessed 7 Sep 2024] (2018)
[66]
IPFS Docs. https://docs.ipfs.tech/. [Accessed 19 Apr 2024] (2024)
Index Terms
- Drug traceability system based on semantic blockchain and on a reputation method
Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.
Recommendations
A semantic blockchain-based system for drug traceability
IDEAS '23: Proceedings of the 27th International Database Engineered Applications SymposiumDrug traceability is currently a very challenging area given the complexity of several issues, including drug quality and counterfeit medications. The counterfeited drugs have a major impact on human life, treatment outcomes and economic burden. To deal ...
Blockchain-based smart tracking and tracing platform for drug supply chain
Highlights- Blockchain and IoT-based smart tracking and tracing platform is proposed.
- A roadmap is provided for drug blockchain implementation, application & evaluation.
- The on-chain and off-chain mechanism is designed for drug data storage.
AbstractThe arising awareness of drug safety has brought tremendous demands on improving traceability and transparency in the supply chain. Conventionally, centralized/distributed database-based traceability platforms are adopted by many drug companies ...
Enabling reputation interoperability through semantic technologies
I-SEMANTICS '10: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Semantic SystemsReputation is a complex concept that has a major role in fields like social sciences, economics as well as computer science. Representing it as a simple form of property-rating or a vector of ratings strips it from its original notion and postulation. ...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
Publisher
Kluwer Academic Publishers
United States
Publication History
Published: 06 September 2024
Accepted: 20 August 2024
Revision received: 12 July 2024
Received: 30 January 2024
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Research-article
Funding Sources
- European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme
- CY Initiative of Excellence
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 0Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)0
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
Reflects downloads up to 01 Jan 2025