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Configuring Blockchain Architectures and Consensus Mechanisms: The Healthcare Supply Chain as a Use Case

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Blockchain Driven Supply Chains and Enterprise Information Systems

Abstract

The literature on blockchain technology in operations and supply chain management falls short in elaborating salient blockchain architectural features. Most often, it attempts to capture the difference between the public, private and consortium blockchain systems. To advance our knowledge of this distributed technology and help in a better understanding of its various applications, we focus on the consensus algorithms deployed within blockchain systems. We introduce the Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), Proof of Authority (PoA) and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT). Our paper demonstrates that many blockchain architectures and new supply chain configurations can emerge with the change in the blockchain consensus mechanism. We focus on the healthcare supply chain, one of the most appealing use cases for blockchain, to outline the architecture of state-of-the-art blockchain systems. This research is a step forwards illustrating the significant change in the concepts and practices towards fully decentralised supply chains.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Ghassan Al-Sumaidaee & Zeljko Zilic

  2. LARGEPA, Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, Paris, France

    Rami Alkhudary & Pierre Féniès

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  1. Ghassan Al-Sumaidaee
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  2. Rami Alkhudary
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  3. Zeljko Zilic
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  4. Pierre Féniès
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Correspondence to Ghassan Al-Sumaidaee .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    Abdelaziz Bouras

  2. School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Ibrahim Khalil

  3. College of Business & Economics, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    Belaid Aouni

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Al-Sumaidaee, G., Alkhudary, R., Zilic, Z., Féniès, P. (2023). Configuring Blockchain Architectures and Consensus Mechanisms: The Healthcare Supply Chain as a Use Case. In: Bouras, A., Khalil, I., Aouni, B. (eds) Blockchain Driven Supply Chains and Enterprise Information Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96154-1_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96154-1_7

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