No abstract

The sudden development of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the limitations in modern healthcare systems to handle public health emergencies. It is evident that adopting innovative technologies such as blockchain can help in effective planning operations and resource deployments. Blockchain technology can play an important role in the healthcare sector, such as improved clinical trial data management by reducing delays in regulatory approvals, and streamline the communication between diverse stakeholders of the supply chain, etc. Moreover, the spread of misinformation has intensely increased during the outbreak, and existing platforms lack the ability to validate the authenticity of data, leading to public panic and irrational behavior. Thus, developing a blockchain-based tracking system is important to ensure that the information received by the public and government agencies is reliable and trustworthy. In this paper, we review various blockchain applications and opportunities in combating the COVID-19 pandemic and develop a tracking system for the COVID-19 data collected from various external sources. We propose, implement, and evaluate a blockchain-based system using Ethereum smart contracts and oracles to track reported data related to the number of new cases, deaths, and recovered cases obtained from trusted sources. We present detailed algorithms that capture the interactions between stakeholders in the network. We present security analysis and the cost incurred by the stakeholders, and we highlight the challenges and future directions of our work. Our work demonstrates that the proposed solution is economically feasible and ensures data integrity, security, transparency, data traceability among stakeholders.

Effectively managing the healthcare supply chain (HCSC) process is crucial for healthcare providers not only during pandemics such as COVID-19 but also in their normal operations. Despite significant advances in new technologies and treatment options providers still suffer from poor procurement, ordering, forecasting, and distribution practices. Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) are an important stakeholder in HCSC and benefit providers with cost savings, volume discounts, and vendor selection. However, the current GPO contract process is time-consuming and lacks efficiency. Hence, our proposed solution integrates blockchain technology and decentralized storage to promote transparency, streamlines communication with stakeholders, and minimize the procurement timeline while avoiding pricing discrepancies and inaccuracies. Our solution connects all the stakeholders such as manufacturer, GPO, distributor, and provider using Ethereum network. In this paper, we propose a blockchain solution using smart contracts to automate the GPO contract process. We propose a generic framework for contracting process in the HCSC with detailed algorithms depicting various interactions among HCSC stakeholders. The smart contract code was developed and tested using Remix IDE and the code is publicly shared via Github 1. We discuss various security risks and present detailed cost analysis of various transactions incurred by the stakeholders. Our analysis demonstrates that the proposed blockchain-based solution is economically feasible as only a minimal transaction fee is expended by the stakeholders in the distributed network.

Public fog nodes extend cloud services for the Internet of Things (IoT) clients and smart devices to provide additional computation capabilities, storage space, and reduce latency and response time. The openness and pervasiveness of public fog nodes leads to the requirement of using trust models to ensure reliability, security, privacy, and meet the service-level agreements (SLAs). Conventional trust models for public fog nodes are centrally configured, deployed, and maintained considering security, privacy, and SLA requirements. However, these trust models enforce centralized governance policies across the system which leads towards the single-point-of-failure and single-point-of-compromise over IoT devices' and users' personal data. This paper proposes a decentralized trust model in order to maintain the reputation of publicly available fog nodes. The reputation is maintained considering users' opinions about their past interactions with the public fog nodes. The proposed trust model is designed using public Ethereum blockchain and smart contract technologies in order to enable decentralized trustworthy service provisioning between IoT devices and public fog nodes. The proposed approach is tested and evaluated in terms of security, performance, and cost. The results show that using blockchain for decentralized reputation management could become more advantageous when compared to the existing centralized trust models.

Supply chain networks have grown in complexity and size due to increased globalization leading to a variety of challenges and opportunities for improvement. Optimizing inventory levels and adjusting replenishment policies have significant effects on the operational performance and profitability of supply chains. Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) is a mutually beneficial arrangement between supplier and buyer, where the supplier is responsible for making inventory and replenishment decisions based on buyers' inventory status. Potential benefits of VMI include reducing inventories, enabling information sharing, eliminating safety stock, and reducing purchasing related costs across the supply chain. In today's supply chains, VMI operations face critical challenges related to data integrity, transparency, traceability, and single point of failure due to its centralized architecture. Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger that ensures a transparent, safe, and secure exchange of data among supply chain stakeholders. The advantages of adopting blockchain technology for VMI operations in a supply chain include decentralized control, security, traceability, and auditable time-stamped transactions. In this paper, we present a blockchain-based approach using smart contracts to transform VMI supply chain operations. We propose a generic framework using Ethereum smart contracts and decentralized storage systems to automate the processes and information exchange and detailed algorithms that capture the interactions among supply chain stakeholders. The smart contract code was developed and tested in Remix environment. We present cost and security analysis incurred by the stakeholders in the supply chain. Adopting a blockchain-based solution to VMI operations in supply chains is economically viable and provides a streamlined, secure, trusted, and transparent mode of communication among various stakeholders.