Leveraging Edge Computing, Blockchain and IPFS for Addressing eHealth Records Challenges

Abstract

Emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence, have made it possible for healthcare institutions to provide high-quality and innovative services. However, the massive amount of data produced by IoT devices has introduced several issues related to security and management. Besides, medical data when stored in a centralized manner may lead to problems in efficiency. Therefore, this article proposes a system design integrating edge computing paradigm, blockchain technology and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to provide data confidentiality and integrity, fine-grained access control and real-time data processing. Based on a review on the state-of-the-art of blockchain-based solutions, we identified the research gaps and inspired a distributed system where blockchain technology is used to ensure data integrity and traceability, smart contracts guarantee a fine-grained access control and IPFS offers a distributed file storage and avoids the single point-of-failure. Finally, to ensure that eHealth emergency data are processed in real-time, an edge layer is integrated to evaluate the collected data from IoT devices. Thus, we guarantee that medical data are processed during their whole lifecycle.