Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computing Methodologies and Communication (ICCMC 2022)

IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP22K25-ART; ISBN: 978-1-6654-1028-1

Counterfeit Drug Detection System with Multi-

Layered Check and SCM using Blockchain
2nd Sushma Sri Burramsetty 3rd Satya Deepika Achnata
1st Nagasai M udgala Chinni
2022 6th International Conference on Computing Methodologies and Communication (ICCMC) | 978-1-6654-1028-1/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICCMC53470.2022.9753778

dept.Information Technology,VRSEC dept..Information Technology, VRSEC dept.Information Technology, VRSEC

Velagapudi Ramakrishna Siddhartha Velagapudi Ramakrishna Siddhartha Velagapudi Ramakrishna Siddhartha
Engineering College Engineering College Engineering College
Vijayawada, India Vijayawada, India
Vijayawada, India
[email protected] [email protected]
[email protected]

4thRiteesh Kotturu 5th Aluri Anand Sai 6th Dr.N.Neelima

.dept.Information Technology, VRSEC dept.Information Technology, VRSEC dept. Information Technology, VRSEC
Velagapudi Ramakrishna Siddhartha Velagapudi Ramakrishna Siddhartha Velagapudi Ramakrishna Siddhartha
Engineering College Engineering College
Engineering College
Vijayawada, India Vijayawada, India
Vijayawada, India
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—10% of drugs in the world are counterfeits placing it in a safe and secured database that can also be
and 200 billion dollars are wasted on counterfeits. These called a distributed ledger in blockchain technology.
counterfeit drugs not only contain toxic doses but also cause
poisoning that leads to death. Using these drugs, not only II. OBJECT IVES
reduces the treatment of contagious health problems but also The main objective of this project is to make people
increases disease progression that leads to fatal. This project
aware of the medicines that they are consuming. To help
produces accurate results about counterfeit drugs and the
usage of drugs if it is not counterfeit. Using Optical Character
them in one way or the other by distinguishing which
Recognition (OCR) check of medicine, the check requires the medicine is safe and which is not. To be the medium
minute details and then determines whether the medicine sold between the good pharmaceutical companies and also for
is genuine or not. S o, they can get the percentage of how the people. A small step to make sure the people are given
genuine the drugs are. By doing this project, one could help the right medicines. To have safe drugs, this project is
people by making them aware of a counterfeit drug that the y providing security for the pharmaceutical companies to
have purchased. produce correct drugs.

Keywords—Ocr, Counterfeits, Blockchain, Power Apps, III. LIT ERAT URE REVIEW
Azure, Multilayer check,Supply Chain Management(SCM). This project has been developed by reviewing these
literatures.
I. INT RODUCT ION
Hanqing Wu, Jiannong Cao, Yanni Yang∗, Cheung Leong
In the world, everyone uses drugs in some or another Tung, Shan Jiang, Bin Tang, Yang Liu, Xiaoqing Wang,
way. One takes medicines for treating diseases and other Yuming Deng[3] provided the insight of opportunities to
infections. Medicines play a vital role in our lives and could
apply blockchain in supply chain management.
become fatal to death. It is a point to consider that
Summarized and discussed four crucial technical challenges
medicines are very important. If these are fake, that is made
in terms of scalability, throughput, access control, data
up of different compounds that may lead to toxicity. These
are called counterfeit drugs that are made to produce and retrieval. Finally designed a food tracing system based on
bring to society. By using these drugs, people not only fall permissioned blockchain for the food supply chain scenario.
sick, but the health problem will become worse. It is an idea
to make a UI that can be made into either a website or an Khizar Abbas,Muhammad Afaq[1] explained about the
app for further changes. This makes people be aware of the revolutionary technology that is blockchain and how can the
medicines by just uploading the tablet sheet image. So, machine models like N-gram and LightGB implemented on
using OCR, one can extract the tablet name and can check datasets and the security that can be obtained by the
further whether a drug is safe or not and with the help of implementation of DSCMR system to distibuted ledger that
blockchain technology and can secure the medicines data. It causes security, confidentiality.
is important because it reduces the burden on the user to
know whether it is genuine or not through a website or an
app that has been developed. It is user-friendly and the other Randhir Kumar[2] explained to overcome the attacks such
feature is it not only gives information genuine or not it as replay, man-in-the-middle they have proposed a
gives the medicine usage to the user. In recent, emerging framework that is based on PKI and digital signature which
technologies, blockchain is one such technology that can prevent attacks and which will provide drug safety as
becomes revolutionary making each and every part to be well as authenticity of manufacture.
secured and maintain confidentiality. So, the medicines that
get manufactured from the products, get transpo rted, H. Yang and B. Yang[4] discussed each and every term that
distributed to retailers and finally reach the customers. Each is used in blockchain to have detailed knowledge for
and every step can be maintained and kept secured by implementation. The blockchain technology is implemented

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 Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computing Methodologies and Communication (ICCMC 2022)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP22K25-ART; ISBN: 978-1-6654-1028-1

to have an authorized, authenticated maintaining the

confidentiality for an electronic cash system that leads to an
idea how secure it is for having a health sector in it.

V.Ramani [11] discussed designing a secure and efficient

data accessibility mechanism for existing systems in
healthcare using blockchain technology. Furthermore, we
analyzed that our proposed scheme can fulfill the
requirements of confidentiality, integrity and authentication.
We have also proposed the potential smart contract
agreement considering this healthcare scenario

Asad Ali Siyal[12] discussed that the blockchain-based Fig. 1. Architecture Diagram
healthcare framework will engage individuals more in their Application: As shown in Fig 1, it allows not only to
healthcare, which will ultimately improve the quality of life know about the genuine tablet but also can view the product
in a more befitting manner. which they selected after that they order the product which
they want and after that they will make payment to that
The proposed system is a combination of two, a supply ordered product in the application.
chain management system us ing blockchain with which the
user could find out whether a tablet is genuine or Algorithm 1 Algorithm for the proposed system
counterfeit.
if ¡function(checkprivilege)==true¿ then
IV. PROPOSED M ET HODS IN CONT INUOUS check timestamp ←
DEVELOPMENT
This project introduces two approaches to eliminate and for each affected person and medical doctor
fight counterfeit drugs to a maximum possible extent. One
method is a user-centric approach, which could help people function(retrieveaddress) ←
in identification of a counterfeit drug just by uploading the
image of the tablet sheet. Internally, this method performs a retrieve address(record)
multi-layer check involving an OCR check of the tablet
sheet image, location-based check, comparison with the else¡ Abort the session¿
existing blueprint image of the tablet sheet and finally
end if
giving an authenticity score to the user, which could tell the
percentage authentic a tablet is. But as this method couldn’t
Retrieve data:
address the whole problem of dealing with counterfeit
drugs. This contains some added features to our proposed if ¡function(agreement)==true¿ then
system which is moreover helpful for the companies for
being transparent with the drugs they are manufacturing; it retrieve data ← from the address(record)
also facilitates the company in dealing with their
counterfeits which are affecting their drug market and it return(patientdata) ← to the precise requestID(affected
indirectly facilitates the users to identify whether a drug person or medical doctor)
brought by them is genuine or not as the supply chain and
the products manufactured by the company is maintained end if
transparent using blockchain. The system that was proposed
is drastically effective in eliminating the counterfeit drugs Append data:
helping both the companies and the users in effective
identification of the counterfeit drugs. if ¡function(agreement)==true¿ then
Website: As shown in Fig 1, Firstly the user will upload append data ←
a tablet sheet image in the website next a OCR check is
performed on the tablet sheet image that gives the tablet to the precise affected person file
name as output in text format. So, if the tablet name exists
in the database using some more requirements for checking return(success) ←to the medical doctor
purposes, that gives the result as to whether it is
authenticated or not. The output that is obtained will be end if
displayed on the website. So, the genuinity and the purpose
of usage of the tablet will be given to the user who wants to change privilege:
check.
function ¡CHANGE PRIVILEGE¿(¡ msg.sender==affected
person¿) ¡ Only affected person can extrade the medical
doctor’s information or upload a few different person¿

end function

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 Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computing Methodologies and Communication (ICCMC 2022)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP22K25-ART; ISBN: 978-1-6654-1028-1

VI. M AJOR FEAT URES

V. FRIENDLY-ENVIRONMENT BET WEEN USER & A PP UI: A ‘UI’ is a user interface that acts as an operating
system for both a website and also an app. So, using this,
The Website is user-friendly where the user can access it one can create friendly websites.
from anywhere through their pc,laptop. The flow is shown
in Fig 2.
POWER APPS: Power apps are used to create effective
apps. So anyone can know about the cause by just checking
through an app. With a power app, one cannot only create
an app easily. It is such a friendly atmosphere that one can
just drag and drop the required elements for developing the
app. One will have different sectors, so one can have a basic
idea for developing it.

BLOCKCHAIN: The technology which was introduced by

Satoshi Nakamoto is based on consensus protocol.
Blockchain is a peer to peer, distributed ledger that is
cryptographically secure, append-only, immutable, and
Fig. 2. Process flow of proposed work updateable only via consensus or agreement among peers. It
The internal process of the website is explained in the is designed for storing transactions. Blockchain provides a
below steps. ledger software to store the data in blocks. The blocks are
immutable. There will be two hash codes inside the blocks
UPLOADING TABLET IMAGE: In this step, an image of in the network; they are prior and current hash codes. Prior
a tablet sheet will be uploaded using a UI that was hash code represents the preceding block, current hash code
developed using a front-end interface. for current block [4].
LOCATION-BASED CHECK: In this check, the The blocks are linked in a backward manner. The other
approximate location of the medicine that was
important feature of blockchain technology is SHA256
manufactured will be obtained. So that, the user can know
algorithm, which provides security and transparency. This
whether it is from a genuine pharma company or not.
technology has the potential to upend the way every
DOING OCR CHECK: An OCR check of the tablet sheet industry monitor and manages its data and information.[4]
image is done by using the python module easy ocr. It In this, blockchain technology is used for this project. By
extracts the name of the tablet. Then by comparing the using Blockchain technology, it can provide security,
substances that it contains with already existing substances transparency to the data. Blockchain technology is the best
in the database like Sqlite, AZURE. The blockchain way for handling and securing the process of a drug supply
technology is implemented for security purposes.So that chain. Now-a-days most of the pharmaceuticals are shifting
pharmaceutical companies can maintain their security. This towards the block chain due to its features i.e. It provides a
also uses power apps for better understanding the purpose distributed decentralized electronic ledger where one can
of drug safety in this project.
see and validate the transactions related information [1].
The methods that have been proposed in this project are
cv2.imread() for loading the images in BGR format that the The Hyperledger composer REST API for the connectivity
user uploads. cv2.cvtColor() to convert BGR format to of web applications to the blockchain network is used.
HSV, this should use the COLOR_BGR2HSV code as the Pharmaceutical industries will give the details of the drug
second parameter.cv2.inRange() method is used to detect an such as drug name, location at which it is manufactured,
object based on the range of color pixel values in the HSV batch number, usage of the drug, and get authorized by an
colorspace. reader.readtext() method is used to read the approved smart contract [2]. The supply chain of trusted
object data that is passed. With the help of these existing pharmaceutical companies will be connected to our
methods that extracts the medicine name which is further blockchain in such a way that when the new medicine
used. comes to the market the data will be added by the
companies and can get the medicines information easily and
BATCH CHECK: Through the batch number obtained from
the advantage is that the illegitimate user cannot access the
the ocr check, then will check the batch number of the
particular tablet with the reference of the database that it is block chain only the legitimate user can access the
having. blockchain using public key.

COMPARISON OF TEXTS: In this stage the extracted VII. SUPPLY CHAIN M ANAGEMENT USING BLOCKCHAIN
drug name will be compared, and we will get the % of As the time goes on changing and centuries are changing,
genuine the drug. new drug products are welcomed into the market.Those new
RESULT: The last step is getting results by applying the drug products may be real or counterfeit. Pharmaceutical
three checks that provide % of genuinity of the drug to the companies are facing difficulties in tracking their medicine
user that they are using. and allowing counterfeit drugs into the markets. So, to get
rid of this problem implemented an idea of Blockchain
technology, SCM. Supply Chain Management (SCM) is

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 Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computing Methodologies and Communication (ICCMC 2022)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP22K25-ART; ISBN: 978-1-6654-1028-1

managing the flow of products and services between

suppliers and customers [3].

Fig. 3.2 Register and login page for pharma companies.

Fig. 3. Drug Supply Chain Management system

with blockchain
Fig. 3.3. Drug details communicating interface.
The drug supply chain management system is deployed
using Ethereum Blockchain which makes it possible to track IX. CONCLUSION & FUT URE SCOPE
and monitor the drug continuously. The secure SCM plays a
key role in stopping counterfeiter drugs from entering the Traditional supply chain methods have changed to a new
market. The solution for this problem is to trace and track robust, secure and transparent way because of blockchain
the delivery of drug processes at each and every stage or technology. The supply chain process is infallible and
phase. Starting from supplier’s raw material, manufacture of prevents fake drugs from entering into the market. So, our
drug, distribution phase, pharmacy, clinic, and consumers is project is thought-provoking how secure it must be by
needed for the stoppage of counterfeit drugs into the market. consuming medicines when people are sick. It not only talks
The latest coin that can handle the supply chain and track about the safe drugs but also gives us an idea in which way
the product is Blockchain. The Blockchain helps a lot by the drug is useful. Our project helps pharmaceutical
tracking the supply chain process effectively. companies to get rid of counterfeit drugs and increases their
business.
This Portal can be further upgraded by adding more
VIII. OUT COME features, where different users and even companies can also
In this project the main outcome is for the user that they can integrate their business and can keep them secure by just
know about the medicine that they are going to take; they placing their chain in the blockchain. A more advanced way
get to know about the product by themselves at a better rate of this project can be made by adding the lightning network
and that they can also know about the safety of the drug that makes it work efficiently. Also, another feature may
which is important for one's well-being. They can also test contain that the user can see the usage of the medicine that
for a good number of tablet sheets whenever they have a they are given as input.
doubt regarding them. Medicines play a key role in our lives
by not making us fall prey to health problems. Use of
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 Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computing Methodologies and Communication (ICCMC 2022)
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