Medical Cargo Delivery using Blockchain Enabled Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Significant growth of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has unlocked many services and applications opportunities in the healthcare sector. Aerial transportation of medical cargo delivery can be an effective and alternative way to ground-based transport systems in times of emergency. To improve the security and the trust of such aerial transportation systems, Blockchain can be used as a potential technology to manage, operate and monitor the entire process. In this paper, we present a blockchain network solution based on Ethereum for the transportation of medical cargo such as blood, medicines, vaccines, etc. The smart contract solution developed in solidity language was tested using the Truffle program. Ganache blockchain test network was employed to host the blockchain network and test the operation of the proposed blockchain model. The suitability of the model is validated in real-time using a UAV and all the flight data are captured and uploaded into the blockchain. The model was executed successfully, and the data uploaded in the blockchain is found to be in line with the developed model. The developed blockchain model provides features such as data immutability and data traceability which are very important for these classes of critical applications. The data once created is sent to blocks and based on the time stamp the data is traced back.