6 - Combining blockchain and machine learning in healthcare and health informatics: An exploratory study

Abstract

Blockchain has emerged as the latest technology with a reliable and secure platform. Blockchain has become very popular with these facilities in different application areas such as the food industry, supply chain management, energy, government support facilities, and healthcare. There is so much inaccurate information and fraud in the healthcare industry, so we need to explore a secure and trusting environment to better the system. Nonfinancial blockchain provides secure and immutable data sharing to data management in the diverse medical workflow. The healthcare domain is one of those potential research areas where we can improve various healthcare activities. We will design and involve complex and significant data management in the medical sector by implementing systematic blockchain workflow with a smart contract system; the healthcare system is most feasible for all the stakeholders. The viable way to offer blockchain with healthcare services enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) is to keep a close watch on patient health parameters by individual and in real time using ever-present health monitoring systems. In these, biosignals are acquired from different sensor nodes, and the data are sent to a gateway through a specific communication protocol. With this feature of blockchain, this healthcare system will offer a more secure and trusting environment to the medical claim department as well as support the government with their different facilities. Based on 5G, this healthcare system will revolutionize the proposed plan, and efficiency and interoperability will improve, especially with IoT-based sensors and communication between different nodes in the network. We are also applying smart contracts in this system to help us with the formal agreement among the hospital, patients, and other nodes (Mediclaim, family members, doctors). We will store and send all data to the device, where we will apply artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, which will help predict a patient’s diseases, especially for doctors. This blockchain-based healthcare system is very efficient with the built-in features and correctly applying a smart contract algorithm or contract between all the nodes. The sensors based on advanced 5G technology work on access control, interoperability, and data integrity.