Waste 4.0: blockchain-enabled peer-to-peer communication among medical waste stakeholders

Abstract

Medical waste management has been receiving increasing attention in recent years. The National Health Service (NHS) of the United Kingdom has started planning its waste strategy to comply with its Net Zero Goals. Waste management does not only involve waste disposal; the process includes segregation, collection, storage, and the transportation of waste from one point to another. Unusual characteristics of waste from the healthcare industry are that waste can be infectious and needs special storage conditions and specific transportation criteria to maintain the waste’s quality. However, entities working with the waste lack knowledge about the waste they receive and need assistance to verify the quality of the waste as well. Limited knowledge can lead to injuries, contamination, or the spread of pathogens. The global monitoring guidelines of medical waste are studied to understand the monitoring requirements and the stakeholders who are working with the waste. Application and research contributions to the digitisation of medical waste monitoring are scrutinised to look for the monitoring gaps. This paper proposes a digital system designed to connect all waste stakeholders within a blockchain environment, supported by automated data collection. A framework for stakeholder communication with data is designed. The data gathered from transporters is analysed before sending the status to the blockchain. Furthermore, the paper outlines a dashboard showcasing the digitisation of waste management, backed by a case study used for validation. A hypothetical case study in managing waste using existing manual waste monitoring in the United Kingdom is compared with monitoring using the system. By employing a proving method of all activities approach with blockchain technology, this method has achieved a 25.17% improvement in medical waste management time-taken efficiency and a 27.85% improvement while virtually eliminating the risk of fraudulent documentation.