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Background situation

Interviews with pharmacies showed that the drug sharing in Switzerland has much potential in being optimized. The exchange of medicines among pharmacies is not fully coordinated and automated. Therefore it lags in efficiency.

The Corona pandemic exposed issues in quality and quantity of material such as masks. Various materials of reduced quality have come into circulation during this period due to insufficient stocks and control mechanisms. Another problem is the insufficient communication between pharmacists and other stakeholders. For example, there is no visible stock of existing drugs in circulation. A pharmacy can therefore not know what other pharmacies have in their stock. This leads to the problem that no efficient exchange of medicines directly between pharmacies and other stakeholders such as patients is possible. As a result, shortages occur in situations of increased demand, even though many medicines would still be in circulation. The issue here is to track the locations and ownerships of the products.

Goal

We would like to optimize the exchange, shipping and transport of medicines between stakeholders in the healthcare industry using Blockchain technology and thus securing the transactions between the stakeholders. Our goal is to prevent medication from being wasted by passing on medication that is no longer used and, if necessary, even reusing it - privately or between different companies in the healthcare sector. In addition, this is also intended to promote the correct disposal of medicines.

Task

This challenge provides you the opportunity to develop a prototype based on a Blockchain solution. Learn how you can establish a stakeholder relationship management on a use case of drug sharing and transfer it into a Blockchain. Be a part of making Lucerne and its health ecosystem smarter.

We offer you a first design pattern to get a impression of a Blockchain solution in Python. This pattern could give you an overview of the Blockchain basics. Instead of getting lost in the technological aspects, you can fully focus on solving the problem.

Your task is to implement a simple Blockchain solution that addresses possible use cases such as delivery, storage and exchange of medicines. On the one hand you could use our provided Python design pattern, on the other hand you may fully develop your own solution.

Data sources

• example data of different medicines and key players

Possible approaches

As healthcare related data is rather sensitive and hard to get, we decided to model the underlying data by creating fictitious data of our stakeholders such as for example pharmacies, medicines and patients. These data will serve as an idea of how you may construct your drug sharing Blockchain .

The final prototype will provide the opportunity to simulate multiple use cases in the trading of medicine, such as ordering of new medicines, storing of medicine or also cases such as shortage of medicines.

Business value

Blockchain offers the opportunity to be safe, transparent and immutable as being cryptographic. Having a stakeholder relationship management build on Blockchain allows the instant sharing and access of valued information.

In the case of medicine sharing, the underlying value of the Blockchain is various. First, it offers just-in-time trading of medicine. Second, it is secure and helps to prevent frauds in the medicine transportation. Third, it verifies the quality of the transaction and transport.

Principal

Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Business School