A Blockchain-Enabled Framework for mHealth Systems.

Dragos Daniel Taralunga,Bogdan Cristian Florea

doi:10.3390/s21082828

Dragos Daniel Taralunga, Bogdan Cristian Florea

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/s21082828

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Abstract

Presently modern technology makes a significant contribution to the transition from traditional healthcare to smart healthcare systems. Mobile health (mHealth) uses advances in wearable sensors, telecommunications and the Internet of Things (IoT) to propose a new healthcare concept centered on the patient. Patients’ real-time remote continuous health monitoring, remote diagnosis, treatment, and therapy is possible in an mHealth system. However, major limitations include the transparency, security, and privacy of health data. One possible solution to this is the use of blockchain technologies, which have found numerous applications in the healthcare domain mainly due to theirs features such as decentralization (no central authority is needed), immutability, traceability, and transparency. We propose an mHealth system that uses a private blockchain based on the Ethereum platform, where wearable sensors can communicate with a smart device (a smartphone or smart tablet) that uses a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), for the distributed storage of health-related data. Smart contracts are used to create data queries, to access patient data by healthcare providers, to record diagnostic, treatment, and therapy, and to send alerts to patients and medical professionals.

Highlights

Mobile communication, mobile devices, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have changed entire sectors, such as education, transportation, agriculture, etc
The gas required for this transaction is 149,721, which corresponds to 0.018565404 ETH
A smart contract deployed on the Ethereum blockchain is responsible for data management and proper association between doctors, patients, and monitored data

Summary

Introduction

Mobile devices, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have changed entire sectors, such as education, transportation, agriculture, etc. The use of IoT, through which people, processes, data, and devices connect to each other over the Internet, is experiencing considerable growth: mobile machine-to-machine (M2M) connections are expected to grow from 1.2 billion in 2018 to 4.4 billion by 2023 [1]. A complete mHealth system consists of interconnected wearable sensors, IoT services, mobile devices, mobile applications, and cloud services. The interconnected wearable sensors form a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) and facilitates acquisitions of biomedical signals (e.g., electrocardiogram—ECG; phonocardiogram—PCG; photoplethysmogram—PPG) and biomedical parameters (e.g., heart-rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, blood oxygen saturation, energy expenditure, etc.) which are transmitted wirelessly to mobile devices

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