Implementation of IoT and blockchain for temperature monitoring in COVID19 vaccine cold chain logistics

Abstract

The current COVID-19 pandemic impacted globally and resulted one hundred million cases with almost two and half million death to-date. The concerns of further spread of the virus has caused the global economy to a halt when most countries globally implementing movement control. Recent approved vaccines developed by multiple fronts has shed some hoped for the recovery of the human activities back to pre-pandemic state. For Malaysia, the government has procured the vaccine from six suppliers and each vaccine require proper temperature monitoring to ensure the safety and the efficacy of the vaccines during transportation and distribution process. Effective vaccine Cold Chain Logistics (CCL) management will be required precise coordination and cooperation across multiple parties to ensure the quality of the vaccines which require temperature monitoring, distribution of records for traceability. Furthermore, the CCL process continuity is becoming critical from the handover point at Malaysia point of receipt from the manufacturer and further distribution from central storage to the two hundred vaccination center across the country. Key concerns will be the vaccines’ CCL process for remote areas in Malaysia. This paper will describe the architecture required to integrate IoT and Blockchain into the CCL management system to monitor the temperature of insulated container or cooler box. While this project may not be able to cover all the parameters it will serve an indication of the required system engineering consideration for the IoT and Blockchain application for the vaccine CCL management.