Blockchain and Big Data Analytics in the Optimization of Nigeria Vaccine Supply Chain

Temperature excursion, cold chain maintenance and the attendant issues of maintaining vaccine integrity across the supply chain network till the last mile remain a critical bottleneck to immunization and vaccine coverage. This study takes a pragmatic approach to understand supply chain professionals’ perspective regarding their awareness, acceptability, feasibility, and preparedness to take up innovations to optimize the vaccine supply chain and immunization coverage. Internet-based questionnaire was used to reach different public health supply chain professionals in Nigeria. A community of professionals whose works relates to the supply chain of public health commodity was selected as the sampling frame. This community includes some supply chain professionals in Nigeria who have identified as part of the International Association of Public Health Logisticians, IAPHL. There 200 valid responses of which 70.5% were males, and 29.5% were females. The knowledge of respondents on the vaccine supply chain was as high as 100% among all professions. All also had good awareness on the use of blockchain in vaccine supply chain with the least value of 50.0% for financial/business and project professionals. Blockchain recorded 100.0% acceptability and feasibility among most professions such as IT, financial/business project management and regulatory with minimum acceptability of 88.9% among health/public health development professions. Acceptability and feasibility of blockchain were also very high regardless of respondents’ position or year of experience. Preparedness to take up blockchains was rated highest (96.0%) for international political will and least (54.0%) for national political will. This study found that the majority of participants had good knowledge of vaccine supply chain as well as a good awareness of blockchain though it is a new technology to developing countries. The overall acceptability and feasibility of blockchains were generally high. Preparedness of Nigeria vaccine supply chain to take up blockchains was rated high across all sectors. We, therefore, conclude that blockchain and big data analytics can be adopted to optimize the Nigeria vaccine supply chain.