Enabling Blockchain with IoMT Devices for Healthcare

Abstract

Significant modifications have been seen in healthcare facilities over the past two decades. With the use of IoT-enabled devices, the monitoring and analysis of patient diagnostic parameters is made considerably easy. The new technology shift for medical field is IoMT. However, the problem of privacy for patient data and the security of information still a point to ponder. This research proposed a prototype model to integrate the blockchain and IoMT for providing better analysis of patient health factors. The authors suggested IoMT data to be collected over Edge Computing gateway devices and forward to Cloud Gateway. The three-layered decision making structure ensures the integrity of the data. The further analysis of information collected over sensor-based devices is done in the Cloud IoT Central Hub service. To ensure the secrecy and compliance of the patient data, Smart Contracts are integrated. After the exchange of smart contracts, a block of information is broadcast over the health blockchain. The P2P network makes it viable to retain all health statistics and further processing of information. The paper describes the scenario and experimental setup for a COVID-19 data-set analyzed in the proposed prototype mode. After the collection of information and decision making, the block of data is sent across all peer nodes. Thus, the power of IoMT and blockchain makes it easy for the healthcare worker to diagnose and handle patient data with privacy. The IoMT is integrated with artificial intelligence to enable decision making based on the classification of data. The results are saved as transactions in the blockchain hyperledger. This study demonstrates the prototype model with test data in a testing network with two peer nodes.