Blockchain for IoT-based healthcare: background, consensus, platforms, and use cases
Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technologies are being heavily exploited and used in may domains, especially for e-healthcare. In healthcare, IoT devices have the ability to provide real-time sensory data from patients to be processed and analyzed. Collected IoT data are subjected to centralized computation, processing, and storage. Such centralization can be problematic, as it can be a single point of failure, mistrust, data manipulation and tampering, and privacy evasion. Blockchain can solve such serious problems by providing decentralized computation and storage for IoT data. Therefore, the integration IoT and blockchain technologies can become a reasonable choice for the design of a decentralized IoT-based e-healthcare systems. In this article, first, we give a brief background on blockchain. Second, popular consensus algorithms used in blockchain are discussed in the context of e-health. Third, blockchain platforms are reviewed for their appropriateness in IoT-based e-healthcare. Finally, few use cases are methodologically given to show how key features of the IoT and blockchain can be leveraged to support healthcare services and ecosystems. We also propose a data-flow architecture that combines the IoT with blockchain, called IoBHealth, that can be used for storing, accessing, and managing of e-healthcare data.
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Blockchain's peer-to-peer architecture is regarded as a possible solution to problems with a single point of failure and bottleneck.
“The blockchain's peer to peer (P2P) architecture is regarded as a possible solution to problems with a single point of failure and bottleneck [11,12].”
From A survey on the adoption of blockchain in IoT: challenges and solutions (2021) · cites this paper as [12]
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A survey on the adoption of blockchain in IoT: challenges and solutions
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- Authors
- Ray, P. P., Dash, D., Salah, K., & Kumar, N.
- Affiliations
- Sikkim University (IN)
- National Institute of Technology Patna (IN)
- Khalifa University of Science and Technology (AE)
- Asia University (TW)
- Venue
- IEEE Systems Journal
- Published
- 2021-03
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 85-94
- ISSN
- 1932-8184 (ISSN-L)
- 1937-9234
- 2373-7816
- OpenAlex
- W3002652184
- Cited by
- 372
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2026: 24 · 2025: 48 · 2024: 62 · 2023: 107 · 2022: 82 · 2021: 40 · 2020: 9
- FWCI
- 55.98
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- IEEE Systems Journal (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Internet of Things and AI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
- Keywords
- blockchain, Internet of Things, e-health, consensus algorithms, blockchain platforms, decentralized storage, data privacy, health data management
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