GaRuDa: A Blockchain-Based Delivery Scheme Using Drones for Healthcare 5.0 Applications

Abstract

Over the years, the healthcare industry has transformed from being hospital-centric to patient-centric. This shift is mainly due to the convergence of emergent technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT)-based healthcare, fifth generation (5G)-assisted networking, and data-driven analytics through artificial intelligence. The convergence, referred to as Healthcare 5.0, has improved healthcare services to support real-time analytics, user mobility, remote monitoring, and personalized user experience through decentralized applications. However, the medical supply chain systems and delivery operations among healthcare stakeholders suffer from limitations of harsh environmental conditions due to restricted zones, rough terrains, war-prone areas, poor road conditions, congested traffic, and remote locations. Thus, the Internet of Drones (IoD) is deployed in Healthcare 5.0 supply chains to streamline and expedite the medical delivery process through open channels (i.e. the Internet). However, the Internet is an open channel that is prone to malicious activities which can violate the privacy and confidentiality of patient data. Blockchain is a promising technology that can handle the security and reliability of drone delivery among untrusted open channels. Motivated by the aforementioned facts, we propose GaRuDa, a blockchain-based drone delivery scheme for Healthcare 5.0 applications. The proposed scheme integrates IoD and blockchain through 5G-enabled tactile Internet to facilitate low-latency responsive delivery of medical supplies that can be chronologically monitored and tracked among different stakeholders. We compared the proposed scheme with the traditional medical delivery scheme with payment gateways to demonstrate its effectiveness in terms of data storage, computation, and communication costs. The simulation results obtained show that the average transaction cost has been reduced by ≈ 44.56 percent, and 5G tactile Internet has a reduced latency of 0.051 ms compared to 18.3 ms in 4G LTE service. The average communication overheads have reduced by ≈ 67.34 percent compared to traditional 4G LTE and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing channels, which indicates the scheme's viability.