SBIR Phase I: Blockchain Platform for the Secure Distribution of Medicine

这一小型企业创新研究(SBIR)项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是使药品供应链中的贸易伙伴和关键利益攸关方能够跟踪来源、鉴定药品、执行有针对性的召回，并在经济高效的基础上实施项目级系列化和聚合。目前，药品供应链受到过时的遗留系统、昂贵/低效的产品召回和假药的困扰。假药和劣质药品的消费每年夺走100多万人的生命，同时从合法制药行业转移了750亿至2000亿美元的销售额。今天，造假者之所以成功，是因为整个供应链缺乏透明度和安全性。随着造假者对打假技术的快速适应，本研究旨在开发一个平台，使企业能够通过利用区块链技术，在端到端的可见性下收回收入和消费者信任。这个SBIR第一阶段项目建议开发一个安全、可扩展的企业级区块链平台，旨在提升药品供应链中的药品可追溯性。该项目旨在显著提高序列化和聚合、贸易伙伴之间安全/高效的数据传输以及防伪技术方面的最先进水平。为了实现这些目标，该项目将包括设计和实施专利技术，包括尖端密码算法、区块链架构和智能合同协议，以在SBIR第一阶段研究时间表内证明技术可行性。这项研究还旨在通过测试区块链网络上的交易可扩展性、智能合同安全性和数据隐私来建立创新的商业可行性。该项目将通过模拟网络上的数十亿串行化事件，并对在串行化和跟踪跟踪软件方面远远超过当前技术水平的区块链架构进行基准测试，以测试可伸缩性。该项目旨在探索智能合同的可行性，以自动核查供应链中的交易和产品。由于这些智能合同的安全性对于可信的产品/交易验证至关重要，因此将针对敌对的网络安全威胁和未经授权的用户访问情况对智能合同进行测试。该项目旨在大幅提高区块链网络内的数据隐私，以使平台用户能够保护交易数据中包含的商业秘密和专有知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to empower trading partners and key stakeholders in the pharmaceutical supply chain with the ability to track provenance, authenticate medicines, perform targeted recalls, and implement item-level serialization and aggregation on a cost-effective basis. Currently, the pharmaceutical supply chain is plagued by outdated legacy systems, expensive/inefficient product recalls, and counterfeit drugs. The consumption of counterfeit and substandard medicines claims over a million lives annually, while diverting between $75 – $200 Billion in sales from the legitimate pharmaceutical industry. Today, counterfeiters succeed due to a lack of transparency and security throughout the supply chain. With counterfeiters’ rapid adaption to anti-counterfeiting technology, this research aims to develop a platform that enables enterprises to reclaim their revenues and consumer trust with end-to-end visibility through the utilization of blockchain technology. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop a secure, scalable, enterprise-grade blockchain platform designed to advance the traceability of medicine within the pharmaceutical supply chain. The project aims to significantly progress the state of the art in serialization and aggregation, secure/efficient data transmission between trading partners, and anti-counterfeiting technology. To accomplish these ends, this project will consist of the design and implementation of proprietary technology consisting of cutting-edge cryptographic algorithms, blockchain architectures, and smart contract protocols to prove technical feasibility within the SBIR Phase I research timeline. This research also aims to establish commercial viability of the innovation by testing transaction scalability, smart contract security, and data privacy on the blockchain network. This project will test scalability by simulating billions of serialized events on the network and benchmarking the blockchain architectures that significantly exceed the current state of the art in serialization and track & trace software. The project intends to explore the viability of smart contracts for automating the verification of transactions and products moving through the supply chain. Since the security of these smart contracts is critical to authentic product/transaction verification, the smart contracts will be tested against adversarial cybersecurity threats and scenarios with unauthorized user access. This project intends to considerably increase data privacy within blockchain networks in order to allow users of the platform the ability to safeguard trade secrets and proprietary knowledge contained within transaction data.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.