Blood Bank Supply chain using Blockchain Technology

Inspiration

The existing blood management system is built on centralized database management system. Even though it serves better for the community than the manual system existed in the past, still lot of challenges persist such as lack of traceability of blood component from its collection till consumption, proper blood quality check, storage of blood in particular temperature and possibility of transfusion related diseases such as AIDS, Hepatitis- B, Hepatitis-C, Malaria. Some places face scarcity in blood on the other hand, in some places there is wastage of blood due to its short life time. Hence Blockchain Technology (BCT) can be used as it is suitable because of its traceability, immutability nature of the data stored in the chain

What it does

Our proposed system consists of various participating stakeholders such as donor, blood collection centre, transporting vehicle, blood testing centre, blood banks, hospital and patient. As the participants are specified, permissioned / private block chain approach is appropriate.

How we built it

In this research work, we have developed business logic for donor registration, blood collection details using Node JS with normal backend code and chain code. Only valid donors are allowed to be registered into system. Donor selection process is crucial one as the number of eligibility conditions is relatively high.

Challenges we ran into

A critical aspect of the health-care system is the blood transfusion service. Donor control, blood storage, grouping and cross matching, checking for transmissible diseases, rationale usage of blood and delivery are part of blood transfusion management system (BTMS). BTMS can be designed under supply chain management. In existing blood transfusion supply chain management system is to collect blood from donors. There are different types of donors such as voluntary non-numerated, family/replacement or paid donors. Collection of blood from donors happens through blood banks and blood donation camps. Blood collection can be whole blood collection or through apheresis procedures where blood components such as red blood cells, plasma or platelets are collected from the donor [24]. The collected blood is then sent to blood banks and is tested in blood testing center/labs which are standalone or attached to blood bank.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

With the help of these latest technologies, process can be thoroughly verified in supply chain management and other fields as well. In this chapter we have proposed a unique architecture for blood donation supply chain management and have implemented the part of the proposed architecture (i.e)donor’s registration and blood collection stages of the blood transfusion system. Donor’s basic details are verified with chain code before donation. Also the collected blood is stored with various validated details in blockchain which ensures the valid data entry in the system. Hence our solution provides immutability, transparency, security and privacy of data for various stakeholders in addition to reliability of the data stored in system. In our system we have used permissioned blockchain network and hence only the valid users can enter into the system. Once the blood collection details are stored in the blockchain, donor is intimated of the same which ensures that the collected blood is under process. This can enable traceability and transparency for the stakeholders involved in the system.

What we learned

In this section we discuss about the overview of our proposed system, the advancements of the proposed system over existing system, overview of the tool we have chosen for system implementation and in depth understanding of the architecture of our proposed system with the initial implementation that we have done.

What's next for Blood Bank Supply using Blockchain Technology

we plan to implement blood testing process, storage process, transfusion to patient etc. In addition, we plan to implement the machine learning module for detecting various disease. Also we plan to optimize the performance of the system by means of block size and also increasing the security by means of cryptographic algorithm.