TY - JOUR

T1 - CoviBlock

T2 - A Secure Blockchain-Based Smart Healthcare Assisting System

AU - Egala, Bhaskara S.

AU - Pradhan, Ashok K.

AU - Gupta, Shubham

AU - Sahoo, Kshira Sagar

AU - Bilal, Muhammad

AU - Kwak, Kyung Sup

PY - 2022/12/15

Y1 - 2022/12/15

N2 - The recent COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the significance of digital health record management systems for pandemic mitigation. Existing smart healthcare systems (SHSs) fail to preserve system-level medical record openness and privacy while including mitigating measures such as testing, tracking, and treating (3T). In addition, current centralised compute architectures are susceptible to denial of service assaults because of DDoS or bottleneck difficulties. In addition, these current SHSs are susceptible to leakage of sensitive data, unauthorised data modification, and non-repudiation. In centralised models of the current system, a third party controls the data, and data owners may not have total control over their data. The Coviblock, a novel, decentralised, blockchain-based smart healthcare assistance system, is proposed in this study to support medical record privacy and security in the pandemic mitigation process without sacrificing system usability. The Coviblock ensures system-level openness and trustworthiness in the administration and use of medical records. Edge computing and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) are recommended as part of a decentralised distributed storage system (DDSS) to reduce the latency and the cost of data operations on the blockchain (IPFS). Using blockchain ledgers, the DDSS ensures system-level transparency and event traceability in the administration of medical records. A distributed, decentralised resource access control mechanism (DDRAC) is also proposed to guarantee the secrecy and privacy of DDSS data. To confirm the Coviblock’s real-time behaviour on an Ethereum test network, a prototype of the technology is constructed and examined. To demonstrate the benefits of the proposed system, we compare it to current cloud-based health cyber–physical systems (H-CPSs) with blockchain. According to the experimental research, the Coviblock maintains the same level of security and privacy as existing H-CPSs while performing considerably better. Lastly, the suggested system greatly reduces latency in operations, such as 32 milliseconds (ms) to produce a new record, 29 ms to update vaccination data, and 27 ms to validate a given certificate through the DDSS.

AB - The recent COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the significance of digital health record management systems for pandemic mitigation. Existing smart healthcare systems (SHSs) fail to preserve system-level medical record openness and privacy while including mitigating measures such as testing, tracking, and treating (3T). In addition, current centralised compute architectures are susceptible to denial of service assaults because of DDoS or bottleneck difficulties. In addition, these current SHSs are susceptible to leakage of sensitive data, unauthorised data modification, and non-repudiation. In centralised models of the current system, a third party controls the data, and data owners may not have total control over their data. The Coviblock, a novel, decentralised, blockchain-based smart healthcare assistance system, is proposed in this study to support medical record privacy and security in the pandemic mitigation process without sacrificing system usability. The Coviblock ensures system-level openness and trustworthiness in the administration and use of medical records. Edge computing and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) are recommended as part of a decentralised distributed storage system (DDSS) to reduce the latency and the cost of data operations on the blockchain (IPFS). Using blockchain ledgers, the DDSS ensures system-level transparency and event traceability in the administration of medical records. A distributed, decentralised resource access control mechanism (DDRAC) is also proposed to guarantee the secrecy and privacy of DDSS data. To confirm the Coviblock’s real-time behaviour on an Ethereum test network, a prototype of the technology is constructed and examined. To demonstrate the benefits of the proposed system, we compare it to current cloud-based health cyber–physical systems (H-CPSs) with blockchain. According to the experimental research, the Coviblock maintains the same level of security and privacy as existing H-CPSs while performing considerably better. Lastly, the suggested system greatly reduces latency in operations, such as 32 milliseconds (ms) to produce a new record, 29 ms to update vaccination data, and 27 ms to validate a given certificate through the DDSS.

KW - blockchain

KW - digital medical records

KW - pandemic mitigation

KW - privacy

KW - security

KW - smart healthcare systems

U2 - 10.3390/su142416844

DO - 10.3390/su142416844

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85144947915

VL - 14

JO - Sustainability (Switzerland)

JF - Sustainability (Switzerland)

SN - 2071-1050

IS - 24

M1 - 16844

ER -