Blockchain-Based Forward Supply Chain and Waste Management for COVID-19 Medical Equipment and Supplies

Generation, types and impacts of biomedical waste during COVID-19: Indian context

India's already-stressed waste disposal system has been strained by the COVID-19 outbreak. The challenge of managing biomedical Waste (BMW) in India has become more complicated in recent years, mainly due to the sudden emergence of COVID-19. As a methodology, a literature review was carried out with the help of Google Scholar, Research Gate, PubMed, and academic journal databases. Additionally, publications from numerous non-academic sources (such as news websites etc.) and current guidelines, such as those from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, were also accessed. The review study identifies that PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) made up the majority of biomedical waste, followed by vaccine waste, during the peak of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. The increase in PPEs such as face masks, aprons, face shields, gloves, goggles, and sanitizers, as well as other medical waste like bandages, plastic containers, syringes, testing kits, and tissues, has significantly changed the makeup of the BMW. This pandemic has hampered the proper management of solid waste, which has now surfaced as a major threat to developing countries. In this paper, biomedical waste management strategies followed in India and its disposal methods, cost-effective and environment-friendly methods to treat medical waste are also discussed.

Supply chain traceability and counterfeit detection of COVID-19 vaccines using novel blockchain-based Vacledger system

We propose a novel framework, Vacledger, for supply chain traceability and counterfeit detection of COVID-19 vaccines using a blockchain network. It includes four smart contracts on a private-permissioned blockchain network for supply chain traceability and counterfeit detection of COVID-19 vaccine, more specifically to (i) handle the rules and regulations of vaccine importing countries and provide authorization for cross the borders (regulatory compliance and border authorization smart contract), (ii) register new and imported vaccines in the Vacledger system (vaccine registration smart contract), (iii) find the number of stocks that have arrived in the Vacledger system (stock accumulation smart contract), and (iv) identify the exact location of the stock (location tracing update smart contract). Our results show that the proposed system keeps track of all activities, events, transactions, and all other past transactions, permanently stored in an immutable Vacledger connected to decentralized peer-to-peer file systems. We observe no algorithm complexity differences between the proposed Vacledger system and existing supply chain frameworks based on different blockchain types. In addition, based on four use cases, we estimate our model's overall gasoline cost (transaction or gas price). The Vacledger system empowers distribution companies to manage their supply chain operations effectively and securely using an in-network, permissioned distributed network. This study employs the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain (the healthcare industry) to demonstrate how the proposed Vacledger system operates. Despite this, our proposed approach might be implemented in other supply chain industries, such as the food industry, energy trading, and commodity transactions.

Blockchain and COVID-19 pandemic: applications and challenges

The year 2020 has witnessed the emergence of coronavirus (COVID-19) that has rapidly spread and adversely affected the global economy, health, and human lives. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the limitations of existing healthcare systems regarding their inadequacy to timely and efficiently handle public health emergencies. A large portion of today's healthcare systems are centralized and fall short in providing necessary information security and privacy, data immutability, transparency, and traceability features to detect fraud related to COVID-19 vaccination certification, and anti-body testing. Blockchain technology can assist in combating the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring safe and reliable medical supplies, accurate identification of virus hot spots, and establishing data provenance to verify the genuineness of personal protective equipment. This paper discusses the potential blockchain applications for the COVID-19 pandemic. It presents the high-level design of three blockchain-based systems to enable governments and medical professionals to efficiently handle health emergencies caused by COVID-19. It discusses the important ongoing blockchain-based research projects, use cases, and case studies to demonstrate the adoption of blockchain technology for COVID-19. Finally, it identifies and discusses future research challenges, along with their key causes and guidelines.

The IoT-enabled sustainable reverse supply chain for COVID-19 Pandemic Wastes (CPW)

Supply chains have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is the most recent worldwide disaster. After the world health organization recognized the latest phenomena as a pandemic, nations became incapacitated to provide the required medical supplies. In the current situation, the world seeks an essential solution for COVID-19 Pandemic Wastes (CPWs) by pushing the pandemic to a stable condition. In this study, the development of a supply chain network is contrived for CPWs utilizing optimization modeling tools. Also, an IoT platform is devised to enable the proposed model to retrieve real-time data from IoT devices and set them as the model's inputs. Moreover, sustainability aspects are appended to the proposed IoT-enabled model considering its triplet pillars as objective functions. A real case of Puebla city and 15 experiments are used to validate the model. Furthermore, a combination of metaheuristic algorithms utilized to solve the model and also seven evaluation indicators endorse the selection of efficient solution approaches. The evaluation indicators are appointed as the inputs of statistical and multicriteria decision-making hybridization to prioritize the algorithms. The result of the Entropy Weights method and Combined Compromise Solution approach confirms that MOGWO has better performance for the medium-sizes, case study and an overall view. Also, NSHHO outclasses the small-size and large-size experiments.

Scalable Lightweight Protocol for Interoperable Public Blockchain-Based Supply Chain Ownership Management

Scalability prevents public blockchains from being widely adopted for Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as supply chain management. Several existing solutions focus on increasing the transaction count, but none of them address scalability challenges introduced by resource-constrained IoT device integration with these blockchains, especially for the purpose of supply chain ownership management. Thus, this paper solves the issue by proposing a scalable public blockchain-based protocol for the interoperable ownership transfer of tagged goods, suitable for use with resource-constrained IoT devices such as widely used Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. The use of a public blockchain is crucial for the proposed solution as it is essential to enable transparent ownership data transfer, guarantee data integrity, and provide on-chain data required for the protocol. A decentralized web application developed using the Ethereum blockchain and an InterPlanetary File System is used to prove the validity of the proposed lightweight protocol. A detailed security analysis is conducted to verify that the proposed lightweight protocol is secure from key disclosure, replay, man-in-the-middle, de-synchronization, and tracking attacks. The proposed scalable protocol is proven to support secure data transfer among resource-constrained RFID tags while being cost-effective at the same time.

Fake news, misinformation, disinformation and supply chain risks and disruptions: risk management and resilience using blockchain

Fake news, misinformation and disinformation have significantly increased over the past years, and they have a profound effect on societies and supply chains. This paper examines the relationship of information risks with supply chain disruptions and proposes blockchain applications and strategies to mitigate and manage them. We critically review the literature of SCRM and SCRES and find that information flows and risks are relatively attracting less attention. We contribute by suggesting that information integrates other flows, processes and operations, and it is an overarching theme that is essential in every part of the supply chain. Based on related studies we create a theoretical framework that incorporates fake news, misinformation and disinformation. To our knowledge, this is a first attempt to combine types of misleading information and SCRM/SCRES. We find that fake news, misinformation and disinformation can be amplified and cause larger supply chain disruptions, especially when they are exogenous and intentional. Finally, we present both theoretical and practical applications of blockchain technology to supply chain and find support that blockchain can actually advance risk management and resilience of supply chains. Cooperation and information sharing are effective strategies.

Waste management beyond the COVID-19 pandemic: Bibliometric and text mining analyses

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the demand for personal protective equipment, in particular face masks, thus leading to a huge amount of healthcare waste generated worldwide. Consequently, such an unprecedented amount of newly emerged waste has posed significant challenges to practitioners, policy-makers, and municipal authorities involved in waste management (WM) systems. This research aims at mapping the COVID-19-related scientific production to date in the field of WM. In this vein, the performance indicators of the target literature were analyzed and discussed through conducting a bibliometric analysis. The conceptual structure of COVID-19-related WM research, including seven main research themes, were uncovered and visualized through a text mining analysis as follows: (1) household and food waste, (2) personnel safety and training for waste handling, (3) sustainability and circular economy, (4) personal protective equipment and plastic waste, (5) healthcare waste management practices, (6) wastewater management, and (7) COVID-19 transmission through infectious waste. Finally, a research agenda for WM practices and activities in the post-COVID-19 era was proposed, focusing on the following three identified research gaps: (i) developing a systemic framework to properly manage the pandemic crisis implications for WM practices as a whole, following a systems thinking approach, (ii) building a circular economy model encompassing all activities from the design stage to the implementation stage, and (iii) proposing incentives to effectively involve informal sectors and local capacity in decentralizing municipal waste management, with a specific focus on developing and less-developed countries.

A bibliometric study on blockchain-based supply chain: a theme analysis, adopted methodologies, and future research agenda

The emergence of the underlying blockchain technology of bitcoin has gained extensive attention from researchers and practitioners. As distributed ledger technology, blockchain widely finds its applications in the supply chain to mitigate issues related to transparency, information sharing, process efficiency, and traceability. This study employed a knowledge-based visualization technique to create a vision beyond other review studies on the blockchain-based supply chain. We used bibliometric and network analysis to synthesize the previous literature. In total, 431 articles in the timespan of 2017 to April 2022 from Scopus and Web of Science (WOS) databases were analyzed after applying search string, inclusion, and exclusion criteria. Basic information was extracted from initial data screening; then, data was analyzed on the grounds of co-occurrence, bibliographic coupling, citation, co-authorship, and co-citation analysis. In addition, thematic analysis was performed to analyze the content of the previous studies, adopted research methods, and dynamic industries in the literature. Besides all these, we identified various research gaps and proposed research directions for future study. We believe that this study provides adequate knowledge to academic scholars and supply chain practitioners to fast-track the current research in the supply chain domain using blockchain technology.

A Blockchain-Based Life-Cycle Environmental Management Framework for Hospitals in the COVID-19 Context

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emergency, many hospitals were built or renovated around the world to meet the challenges posed by the rising number of infected cases. Environmental management in the hospital life cycle is vital in preventing nosocomial infection and includes many infection control procedures. In certain urgent situations, a hospital must be completed quickly, and work process approval and supervision must therefore be accelerated. Thus, many works cannot be checked in detail. This results in a lack of work liability control and increases the difficulty of ensuring the fulfillment of key infection prevention measures. This study investigates how blockchain technology can transform the work quality inspection workflow to assist in nosocomial infection control under a fast delivery requirement. A blockchain-based life-cycle environmental management framework is proposed to track the fulfillment of crucial infection control measures in the design, construction, and operation stages of hospitals. The proposed framework allows for work quality checking after the work is completed, when some work cannot be checked on time. Illustrative use cases are selected to demonstrate the capabilities of the developed solution. This study provides new insights into applying blockchain technology to address the challenge of environmental management brought by rapid delivery requirements.

CovidBChain: Framework for access-control, authentication, and integrity of Covid-19 data

In the Covid-19 pandemic, information about the medical equipment such as personal protective equipment, ventilators, testing kits, oxygen cylinders, ICU beds, and patient diagnostic status is a black box for the patients. This article proposes a blockchain-assisted Covid-19 big data chain (CovidBChain) framework to handle the Covid-19 data, which is of colossal size (volume), coming from different sources (variety) and generated at every time instance (velocity). CovidBChain is proposed to protect electronic health records and Covid-19 equipment's information from illegal modification. CovidBChain provides transparency, access control, and integrity to Covid-19 data. The status of critical equipment like ventilator, Covid-19 beds, oxygen cylinder, and ICU status each such operation is integrated into the CovidBChain as a transaction. A prototype has been simulated using Ganache, Metamask, InterPlanetary File System, and Reactjs. The comparative assessment using proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-authority (PoA) deduces that the upload and retrieval time in PoA is less than PoW, while the transaction cost is more in PoW. The overhead of message exchange communication is reduced by a factor of 4 . 3 × in PoA as compared to the PoW approach. CovidBChain has been tested on the Ethereum official test network Ropsten for PoW and Goerli for PoA.

Blockchain-based solution for COVID-19 vaccine waste reduction

Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines have been produced on a large scale since 2020. However, large-scale vaccine production has led to two forms of waste; namely, overproduction and underutilization. Most of today's systems and technologies used to manage waste data related to COVID-19 vaccines fall short of providing transparency, traceability, accountability, trust, and security features. In this paper, we address the problem of COVID-19 vaccines waste due to their overproduction and underutilization. We propose a blockchain-based solution that is composed of five phases: registration, commitment; production and delivery; consumption; and waste assessment. These phases make up the complete life cycle of a COVID-19 vaccine, and they are governed by several smart contracts to ensure accountability of all the actions taken by the involved entities and reduce any excessive waste caused by overproduction, overordering, or underconsumption. We ensure security, traceability, and data provenance by recording all actions through smart contracts in the form of events on an immutable ledger. We utilize decentralized storage such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to reduce the costs posed by large-sized file storage when stored on-chain. We present algorithms that describe the logic behind our developed smart contracts. We test and validate the functionalities of our proposed solution. We conduct security, cost, and scalability analyses to show that our solution is affordable, scalable, and secure. We compare our solution with the existing blockchain-based solutions to show its novelty and superiority. The smart contract code is made publicly available on GitHub.

Sustainable development-oriented location-transportation integrated optimization problem regarding multi-period multi-type disaster medical waste during COVID-19 pandemic

After the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, devising an effective reverse logistics supply chain to clean up disaster medical waste is conducive to controlling and containing novel coronavirus transmission. Thus, the focus of this paper concentrates on multi-period multi-type disaster medical waste location-transportation integrated optimization problem with the concern of sustainability, which is formulated as a tri-objective mixed-integer programming model with the goals of maximizing total economic benefits, minimizing total carbon emissions and total potential social risks. Then, a real-world case from Wuhan using CPLEX solver is used to validate the developed model. Results indicate that constructing DMWTTSs with flexible capacity in different periods is encouraged to handle the sharply increasing disaster medical waste. The multi-period decision model outperforms the single-period one in disaster medical waste supply chains because the former has the capability of handling the uncertainties in the future periods. Increasingly, since the increase of budget doesn't always work well and social resources are limited, the estimation of minimum budget to obtain optimum overall performance is of great importance.

Medical-Waste Chain: A Medical Waste Collection, Classification and Treatment Management by Blockchain Technology

To prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2019 has seen unprecedented demand for medical equipment and supplies. However, the problem of waste treatment has not yet been given due attention, i.e., the traditional waste treatment process is done independently, and it is not easy to share the necessary information. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, the interaction between parties is minimized to limit infections. To evaluate the current system at medical centers, we also refer to the traditional waste treatment processes of four hospitals in Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh cities (Vietnam). Almost all hospitals are handled independently, lacking any interaction between the stakeholders. In this article, we propose a decentralized blockchain-based system for automating waste treatment processes for medical equipment and supplies after usage among the relevant parties, named Medical-Waste Chain. It consists of four components: medical equipment and supplies, waste centers, recycling plants, and sorting factories. Medical-Waste Chain integrates blockchain-based Hyperledger Fabric technology with decentralized storage of medical equipment and supply information, and securely shares related data with stakeholders. We present the system design, along with the interactions among the stakeholders, to ensure the minimization of medical waste generation. We evaluate the performance of the proposed solution using system-wide timing and latency analysis based on the Hyperledger Caliper engine. Our system is developed based on the hybrid-blockchain system, so it is fully scalable for both on-chain and off-chain-based extensions. Moreover, the participants do not need to pay any fees to use and upgrade the system. To encourage future use of Medical-Waste Chain, we also share a proof-of-concept on our Github repository.

Forecasting e-waste recovery scale driven by seasonal data characteristics: A decomposition-ensemble approach

Forecasting the scale of e-waste recycling is the basis for the government to formulate the development plan of circular economy and relevant subsidy policies and enterprises to evaluate resource recovery and optimise production capacity. In this article, the CH-X12 /STL-X framework for e-waste recycling scale prediction is proposed based on the idea of 'decomposition-integration', considering that the seasonal data characteristics of quarterly e-waste recycling scale data may lead to large forecasting errors and inconsistent forecasting results of a traditional single model. First, the seasonal data characteristics of the time series of e-waste recovery scale are identified based on Canova-Hansen (CH) test, and then the time series suitable for seasonal decomposition is extracted with X12 or seasonal-trend decomposition procedure based on loess (STL) model for seasonal components. Then, the Holt-Winters model was used to predict the seasonal component, and the support vector regression (SVR) model was used to predict the other components. Finally, the linear sum of the prediction results of each component is used to obtain the final prediction result. The empirical results show that the proposed CH-X12/STL-X forecasting framework can better meet the modelling requirements for time-series forecasting driven by different seasonal data characteristics and has better and more stable forecasting performance than traditional single models (Holt-Winters model, seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average model and SVR model).

Uncovering dimensions of the impact of blockchain technology in supply chain management

Supply chains around the globe are faced with difficulties and disruptions due to the worldwide pandemic situation and digital solutions are needed. There is significant research interest in the implementation of blockchain technology (BCT) for supply chain management (SCM). A challenge that remains is analyzing the interactions of BCT in different areas of SCM. This study aims to identify the influential dimensions of the impact of BCT adoption in SCM and to discuss the synergetic and counter-synergetic effects between these dimensions. Advantages, disadvantages, and constraints of adopting BCT in the SCM context are explored through a systematic literature review, which provides the foundation for identifying the dimensions of impact. The interactions between these dimensions are conceptually discussed. This study introduces three dimensions of the impact of implementing BCT in SCM: ‘operations and processes’, ‘supply chain relationships’, and ‘innovation and data access’. These dimensions are interrelated and have overlapping areas within them, which leads to synergetic and counter-synergetic effects. The overlaps and synergies of the three dimensions of impact are illustrated, and the virtuous and vicious cycles of BCT adoption in SCM cases are highlighted. This study assists scholars and practitioners by clarifying the synergetic relationships within the dimensions of the impact of BCT in SCM and by providing considerations to prevent undesirable effects and expand desired ones.

Blockchain Technology in Operations & Supply Chain Management: A Content Analysis

Scholars are increasingly examining how the distributed blockchain technology can counter specific supply chain and operations management challenges. Various research approaches emerge from different scholarly backgrounds, but the interrelation of research areas and current trends has not been adequately considered in a systematic review. We employ a data-driven content analysis approach to examine previous research on blockchain technology in operations management and supply chain management. We investigate the extent to which blockchain technology was considered in scholarly works, structure the research efforts, and identify trends, interrelated themes, and promising research opportunities. Quantitative and qualitative content analysis is conducted on an extensive literature sample of 410 articles. Results indicate an optimistic attitude due to potentials such as tracking and tracing abilities, efficiency increases, and trust-building. Conceptual studies dominate the literature set, with increasing qualitative research efforts. Grand theories are seldomly addressed in the studies. Blockchain technology is outlined as particularly useful when combined with other technologies like IoT. We also identified sustainability implications of the technology, such as enabling transparency for SC stakeholders. Cryptocurrencies can facilitate further efficiency gains if legal uncertainties are reduced. The study is concluded with managerial and theoretical implications and future research opportunities.

PHDMF: A Flexible and Scalable Personal Health Data Management Framework Based on Blockchain Technology

Currently, most of the personal health data (PHD) are managed and stored separately by individual medical institutions. When these data need to be shared, they must be transferred to a trusted management center and approved by data owners through the third-party endorsement technology. Therefore, it is difficult for personal health data to be shared and circulated over multiple medical institutions. On the other hand, the use of directly exchanging and sharing the original data has become inconsistent with the data rapid growth of medical institutions because of the need of massive data transferring across agencies. In order to secure sharing and managing the mass personal health data generated by various medical institutions, a federal personal health data management framework (PHDMF, https://hvic.biosino.org/PHDMF) has been developed, which had the following advantages: 1) the blockchain technology was used to establish a data consortium over multiple medical institutions, which could provide a flexible and scalable technical solution for member extension and solve the problem of third-party endorsement during data sharing; 2) using data distributed storage technology, personal health data could be majorly stored in their original medical institutions, and the massive data transferring process was of no further use, which could match up with the data rapid growth of these institutions; 3) the distributed ledger technology was utilized to record the hash value of data, given the anti-tampering feature of the technology, malicious modification of data could be identified by comparing the hash value; 4) the smart contract technology was introduced to manage users’ access and operation of data, which made the data transaction process traceable and solved the problem of data provenance; and 5) a trusted computing environment was provided for meta-analysis with statistic information instead of original data, the trusted computing environment could be further applied to more health data, such as genome sequencing data, protein expression data, and metabolic profile data through combining the federated learning and blockchain technology. In summary, the framework provides a convenient, secure, and trusted environment for health data supervision and circulation, which facilitate the consortium establish over medical institutions and help achieve the value of data sharing and mining.

Evolutionary Game Analysis of Medical Waste Disposal in China under Different Reward and Penalty Models

Although local governments have issued relevant reward and penalty policies, there are still problems of medical waste disposal in China, particularly in light of the special situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, these problems are generated in the game between local governments and disposal enterprises. Accordingly, based on the evolutionary game theory, this paper establishes and analyzes the game system between local governments and disposal enterprises under four modes: static reward and static penalty, dynamic reward and static penalty, static reward and dynamic penalty, and dynamic reward and dynamic penalty. The theoretical analysis is verified through numerical simulation of a medical waste disposal case in China. The results showed that when local governments choose the static reward and static penalty mode, the game system hardly always has an evolutionary stable state, and the dynamic reward or dynamic penalty mode can make up for the shortcomings of the static reward and static penalty mode. The static reward and dynamic penalty mode is considerably better than the other two dynamic reward and penalty modes, which has the best effect on improving the quality of medical waste disposal. Additionally, if the reward or penalty increases dynamically, local governments tend to implement a “relaxed supervision” strategy, and disposal enterprises will still improve the disposal quality of medical waste. The suggestions proposed based on the research conclusions offer some enlightenment for policymakers to formulate reasonable reward and penalty measures.

A Systematic Literature Review of Blockchain-Enabled Supply Chain Traceability Implementations

In recent years, traceability systems have been developed as practical tools for improving supply chain (SC) transparency and visibility, especially in health and safety-sensitive sectors like food and pharmaceuticals. Blockchain-related SC traceability research has received significant attention during the last several years, and arguably blockchain is currently the most promising technology for providing traceability-related services in SC networks. This paper provides a systematic literature review of the various technical implementation aspects of blockchain-enabled SC traceability systems. We apply different drivers for classifying the selected literature, such as (a) the various domains of the available blockchain-enabled SC traceability systems and relevant methodologies applied; (b) the implementation maturity of these traceability systems along with technical implementation details; and (c) the sustainability perspective (economic, environmental, social) prevalent to these implementations. We provide key takeaways regarding the open issues and challenges of current blockchain traceability implementations and fruitful future research areas. Despite the significant volume and plethora of blockchain-enabled SC traceability systems, academia has so far focused on unstructured experimentation of blockchain-associated SC traceability solutions, and there is a clear need for developing and testing real-life traceability solutions, especially taking into account feasibility and cost-related SC aspects.

Environmental impacts of hazardous waste, and management strategies to reconcile circular economy and eco-sustainability

The rise in living standards and the continuous development in the global economy led to the depletion of resources and increased waste generation per capita. This waste might posture a significant threat to human health or the environmental matrices (water, air, soil) when inadequately treated, transported, stored, or managed/disposed of. Therefore, effective waste management in an economically viable and environmentally friendly way has become meaningful. Prominent technology is the need of the day for circular economy and sustainable development to reduce the speed of depletion in resources and produce an alternative means for the future demands in the different sectors of science and technology. In order to meet the potential requirements for energy production or producing secondary raw material, solid waste may be the prime source. The activities of living organisms convert waste products in one form or another in which electronic waste (e-waste) is a modern-day problem that is growing by leaps and bounds. The disposal protocols of the e-waste management need to be given proper attention to avoid its hazardous impacts. The e-waste is obtained from any equipment or devices that run by electricity or batteries like laptops, palmtops, computers, televisions, mobile phones, digital video discs (DVD), and many more. E-waste is one of the rapidly growing causes of world pollution today. Plenty of research is available in the scientific literature, which shows different approaches being set up and followed to manage and dispose of waste products. These strategies to manage waste products designed by the states all over the globe revolves around minimal production, authentic techniques for the management of waste produced, reuse and recycling, etc. The virtual survey of the available literature on waste management shows that it lacks specificity regarding the management of waste products parallel to ecological sustainability. The presented review covers the sources, potential environmental impacts, and highlights the importance of waste management strategies to provide the latest and updated knowledge. The review also put forward the countermeasures that need to be taken on national and International levels addressing the sensitive issue of waste management.

The implications of Industry 4.0 on supply chains amid the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review

Background: COVID-19 has caused significant disruptions in supply chains. It has increased the demand for products and decreased the supply of raw materials. This has interrupted many production processes. The emerging technologies of Industry 4.0 have the potential to streamline supply chains by improving time-sensitive customized solutions during this emergency.

Purpose: The study identifies the core technologies of Industry 4.0 and the role and impact of these technologies in managing the disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak in strengthening the supply chain resilience.

Design/methodology/approach: An extensive literature review using the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” method was carried out on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on supply chains and Industry 4.0 technologies. The study was undertaken by selecting keywords validated by experts, and a search was conducted in the Scopus, ProQuest, and Google Scholar databases. Publications from the leading journals on these topics were selected. The bibliographical search resulted in 1484 articles, followed by multiple layers of filtering. Finally, the most pertinent articles were selected for review, and a total of 42 articles were analyzed.

Findings: The findings of the study showed that the majority of the articles emphasized the digitalization of supply chain management, acknowledging the fundamentals, applications, and prospects, revealing the drivers and challenges of Industry 4.0 technologies to manage disruptions. Most of the authors identified IoT, big data, cloud computing, additive manufacturing, and blockchain to maintain the supply chain resilience.

Originality/value: Existing literature on epidemics lacks the basics and practices of utilizing Industry 4.0 technologies in the supply chain recovery process. To fill this research gap, the study summarizes the potential of Industry 4.0 technologies to lessen supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19. The study findings are valuable for policymakers and practitioners and contribute to supply chain management studies.

A survey of application research based on blockchain smart contract

Nowadays, blockchain technology and industry has developed rapidly all over the world, which is inseparable from continuous innovation and improvement on smart contract technology. Therefore, by summarizing the working principle and application research status of blockchain smart contract, this paper analyzes the development and challenges of smart contract. Firstly, we introduce the model and operation principle of blockchain smart contract for the overall architecture, analyze the deployment process of smart contract with Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric and EOSIO, and make a comparative analysis from the technical level. And taking Byteball, InterValue and IOTA platforms as examples, we introduce the deployment process and application potential for DAG-based blockchain smart contract. Additionally, we also summarize the application research of smart contract for international and Blockchain Oracle, and discuss its innovative application and development trend in the future. Secondly, we introduce the application status of smart contract with Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric platforms from the aspects of financial transactions, Internet of things, medical applications, and supply chain, and further discuss EOS (enterprise operation system), Blockchain Oracle and other application fields. Furthermore, we introduce the application advantages and challenges to smart contract for industrial Internet from the fields of manufacturing, food industry, industrial Internet of things and industry 4.0. Finally, we discuss the challenges faced by smart contract with technical issues, analyzes the impact on large-scale applications and mining system on the sustainable development of smart contract, and looks forward to the future research direction of blockchain smart contract.

Blockchain applications in health care for COVID-19 and beyond: a systematic review

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial and global impact on health care, and has greatly accelerated the adoption of digital technology. One of these emerging digital technologies, blockchain, has unique characteristics (eg, immutability, decentralisation, and transparency) that can be useful in multiple domains (eg, management of electronic medical records and access rights, and mobile health). We conducted a systematic review of COVID-19-related and non-COVID-19-related applications of blockchain in health care. We identified relevant reports published in MEDLINE, SpringerLink, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Xplore, ScienceDirect, arXiv, and Google Scholar up to July 29, 2021. Articles that included both clinical and technical designs, with or without prototype development, were included. A total of 85 375 articles were evaluated, with 415 full length reports (37 related to COVID-19 and 378 not related to COVID-19) eventually included in the final analysis. The main COVID-19-related applications reported were pandemic control and surveillance, immunity or vaccine passport monitoring, and contact tracing. The top three non-COVID-19-related applications were management of electronic medical records, internet of things (eg, remote monitoring or mobile health), and supply chain monitoring. Most reports detailed technical performance of the blockchain prototype platforms (277 [66·7%] of 415), whereas nine (2·2%) studies showed real-world clinical application and adoption. The remaining studies (129 [31·1%] of 415) were themselves of a technical design only. The most common platforms used were Ethereum and Hyperledger. Blockchain technology has numerous potential COVID-19-related and non-COVID-19-related applications in health care. However, much of the current research remains at the technical stage, with few providing actual clinical applications, highlighting the need to translate foundational blockchain technology into clinical use.

Blockchain-Based Decentralized Digital Manufacturing and Supply for COVID-19 Medical Devices and Supplies

Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) has disclosed the deficiencies and limitations of the existing manufacturing and supply chain systems used for medical devices and supplies. It enforces the necessity to accelerate the shift towards decentralized digital manufacturing and supply chain networks. This paper proposes a blockchain-based solution for decentralized digital manufacturing of medical devices and their supply. We develop Ethereum smart contracts to govern and track transactions in a decentralized, transparent, traceable, auditable, trustworthy, and secure manner. This allows overcoming certain issues hindering the transition towards decentralized digital manufacturing and supply, including trusted traceability, attestations, certifications, and secured intellectual property (IP) rights. We incorporate the decentralized storage of the InterPlanetary file system (IPFS) into the Ethereum blockchain to store and fetch Internet of things (IoT)-based devices records and additional manufacturing and supply details. We present the system architecture and algorithms along with their full implementation and testing details. Furthermore, we present cost and security analyses to show that the proposed solution is cost-efficient and resilient against well-known vulnerabilities and security attacks. We make our smart contracts code publicly available on GitHub.

On Deploying Blockchain Technologies in Supply Chain Strategies and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Outlook

The emergence of a new pandemic, known as COVID-19, has touched various sections of the supply chain (SC). Since then, numerous studies have been conducted on the issue, but the need for a holistic review study that highlights the gaps and limits of previous research, as well as opportunities and agendas for future studies, is palpable. Through a systematic literature review on blockchain technology (BCT) deployment in supply-chain management (SCM) concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, this research seeks to add to the content of previous studies and to enlighten the path for future studies. Relevant papers were found using a variety of resources (Scopus, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and ProQuest). Seventy-two articles were systematically selected, considering the PRISMA procedure, and were thoroughly analyzed based on BCT, methodologies, industrial sectors, geographical, and sustainability context. According to our findings, there is a significant lack of empirical and quantitative methodologies in the literature. The majority of studies did not take specific industries into account. Furthermore, the articles focusing on the sustainability context are few, particularly regarding social and environmental issues. In addition, most of the reviewed papers did not consider the geographical context. The results indicate that the deployment of BCT in several sectors is not uniform, and this utilization is reliant on their services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the concentration of research on the impacts of the BCT on SCM differs according to the conditions of various countries in terms of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings also show that there is a direct relationship between the deployment of BCT and sustainability factors, such as economic and waste issues, under the circumstances surrounding COVID-19. Finally, this study offers research opportunities and agendas to help academics and other stakeholders to gain a better knowledge of the present literature, recognize aspects that necessitate more exploration, and drive prospective studies.

Blockchain as an enabling technology in the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review

The impacts caused by the unprecedented transmission of COVID-19 have given rise to new challenges that are shaking the structures of humanity. Several enabling technologies are currently being used as key strategies in creating improvements and responses to the difficulties created by the pandemic and blockchain is one of these solution proposals. Within this scenario, this work aims to study and analyze how the blockchain technology can help in the struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic through a systematic review of the literature. Although the study is limited by the moment when the crisis is still in progress, the results show that it is clear that the adoption of the blockchain can effectively help in the fight against the coronavirus, considering that the main features of the blockchain can support the successful implementation of many use cases. This paper has the role of assisting academics and professionals in identifying the application focus of the blockchain, as well as showing the main opportunities and challenges and the relevance of the subject to the current context of the pandemic.

A unified blockchain-based platform for global e-waste management

Purpose

The rapid technological growth, changes in consumer demands, products’ built-in obsolescence, presence of more non-repairable parts, shorter lifespan, etc., lead to the generation of e-waste at an unprecedented rate. Although a number of research proposals and business products to manage e-waste exist in the literature, they lack in many aspects such as incomplete coverage of product’s life cycle, access control, payment channels (in few cases), incentive mechanisms, scalability issues, and missing experimental validation. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel blockchain-based e-waste management system aiming to mitigate the above-mentioned downsides and limitations of the existing proposals.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper proposes a robust and reliable e-waste management system by leveraging the power of blockchain technology, which captures the complete life cycle of e-products commencing from their manufacturing as new products to their disposal as e-waste and their recycling back into raw materials.

Findings

While the use of blockchain technology increases accountability, transparency and trust in the system, the proposal overcomes various challenges and limitations of the existing systems by providing seamless interactions among various agencies.

Originality/value

This paper presents a prototype implementation of the system as a proof-of-concept using solidity on the Ethereum platform and this paper performs experimental evaluations to demonstrate its feasibility and effective performance in terms of execution gas cost and transaction throughput.