360 research outputs found
Blockchain Tree for eHealth
The design of access control mechanisms for healthcare systems is
challenging: it must strike the right balance between permissions and
restrictions. In this work, we propose a novel approach that is based on the
Blockchain technology for storage patient medical data and create an audit
logging system able to protect health data from unauthorized modification and
access. The proposed method consists of a tree structure: a main chain linked
with the patient's identity and one or several Subchains which are used for
storing additional critical data (e.g., medical diagnoses or access logs)
A patient agent controlled customized blockchain based framework for internet of things
Although Blockchain implementations have emerged as revolutionary technologies for various industrial applications including cryptocurrencies, they have not been widely deployed to store data streaming from sensors to remote servers in architectures known as Internet of Things. New Blockchain for the Internet of Things models promise secure solutions for eHealth, smart cities, and other applications. These models pave the way for continuous monitoring of patientâs physiological signs with wearable sensors to augment traditional medical practice without recourse to storing data with a trusted authority. However, existing Blockchain algorithms cannot accommodate the huge volumes, security, and privacy requirements of health data. In this thesis, our first contribution is an End-to-End secure eHealth architecture that introduces an intelligent Patient Centric Agent. The Patient Centric Agent executing on dedicated hardware manages the storage and access of streams of sensors generated health data, into a customized Blockchain and other less secure repositories. As IoT devices cannot host Blockchain technology due to their limited memory, power, and computational resources, the Patient Centric Agent coordinates and communicates with a private customized Blockchain on behalf of the wearable devices. While the adoption of a Patient Centric Agent offers solutions for addressing continuous monitoring of patientsâ health, dealing with storage, data privacy and network security issues, the architecture is vulnerable to Denial of Services(DoS) and single point of failure attacks. To address this issue, we advance a second contribution; a decentralised eHealth system in which the Patient Centric Agent is replicated at three levels: Sensing Layer, NEAR Processing Layer and FAR Processing Layer. The functionalities of the Patient Centric Agent are customized to manage the tasks of the three levels. Simulations confirm protection of the architecture against DoS attacks. Few patients require all their health data to be stored in Blockchain repositories but instead need to select an appropriate storage medium for each chunk of data by matching their personal needs and preferences with features of candidate storage mediums. Motivated by this context, we advance third contribution; a recommendation model for health data storage that can accommodate patient preferences and make storage decisions rapidly, in real-time, even with streamed data. The mapping between health data features and characteristics of each repository is learned using machine learning. The Blockchainâs capacity to make transactions and store records without central oversight enables its application for IoT networks outside health such as underwater IoT networks where the unattended nature of the nodes threatens their security and privacy. However, underwater IoT differs from ground IoT as acoustics signals are the communication media leading to high propagation delays, high error rates exacerbated by turbulent water currents. Our fourth contribution is a customized Blockchain leveraged framework with the model of Patient-Centric Agent renamed as Smart Agent for securely monitoring underwater IoT. Finally, the smart Agent has been investigated in developing an IoT smart home or cities monitoring framework. The key algorithms underpinning to each contribution have been implemented and analysed using simulators.Doctor of Philosoph
Blockchain leveraged decentralized IoT eHealth framework
Blockchain technologies recently emerging for eHealth, can facilitate a secure, decentral- ized and patient-driven, record management system. However, Blockchain technologies cannot accommodate the storage of data generated from IoT devices in remote patient management (RPM) settings as this application requires a fast consensus mechanism, care- ful management of keys and enhanced protocols for privacy. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain leveraged decentralized eHealth architecture which comprises three layers: (1) The Sensing layer âBody Area Sensor Networks include medical sensors typically on or in a patient body transmitting data to a smartphone. (2) The NEAR processing layer âEdge Networks consist of devices at one hop from data sensing IoT devices. (3) The FAR pro- cessing layer âCore Networks comprise Cloud or other high computing servers). A Patient Agent (PA) software replicated on the three layers processes medical data to ensure reli- able, secure and private communication. The PA executes a lightweight Blockchain consen- sus mechanism and utilizes a Blockchain leveraged task-offloading algorithm to ensure pa- tientâs privacy while outsourcing tasks. Performance analysis of the decentralized eHealth architecture has been conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the system in the pro- cessing and storage of RPM data
Digital Transformation in Healthcare
This book presents a collection of papers revealing the impact of advanced computation and instrumentation on healthcare. It highlights the increasing global trend driving innovation for a new era of multifunctional technologies for personalized digital healthcare. Moreover, it highlights that contemporary research on healthcare is performed on a multidisciplinary basis comprising computational engineering, biomedicine, biomedical engineering, electronic engineering, and automation engineering, among other areas
Building Digital Trust to Protect Whistleblowers - A blockchain-based Reporting Channel
Organizations today need internal reporting channels to report illegal/unethical misconduct. For this purpose, organizations set up one or more - often digital - internal reporting channels. Persons/Employees who want to report misconduct, so-called whistleblowers, expose themselves to reprisals and therefore need trustworthy reporting channels which ensure ÂŽDigital TrustÂŽ. Blockchain, a technology that overcomes the need for trust due to its properties of immutability and integrity of data, could be promising as underlying technology for a digital reporting channel which is recognized as trustworthy. In our research, we explored multiple perspectives relevant to a trustworthy digital reporting system. Applying design science research, we evaluated the current state of the art of (digital) reporting channels and developed a prototypical blockchain-based reporting solution called âIntegrity@Insideâ. The prototype is being iteratively demonstrated and pre-evaluated
Blockchain-based Smart Contracts for Consent Management in eHealth
Master's thesis in Information- and communication technology (IKT590)Since the introduction of Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto in a white paper in 2008, Blockchain has gathered considerable attention because of its ability to be decentralized and immutable. Blockchain is still considered as a new and experimental technology, and the state-of-the-art literature review was conducted to identify various use cases for the Blockchain technology for the healthcare industry. Consent management is one of the most critical components in healthcare because of the constantly evolving eHealth services requiring access to personal data, and of corresponding privacy laws, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), created to provide patients with more control over their healthcare data. This thesis focuses on how Blockchain can be used to facilitate consent management, where the patients are in control of who can access their personal data. This thesis creates a consent management solution for healthcare data using Blockchain-based smart contracts built on an Ethereum platform. These smart contracts are developed in Solidity programming language, and deployed in a test network for verification
Technical Viewpoint of Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Directions of Policy Change and Information-Flow in Digital Healthcare Systems
Source: https://www.thinkmind.org/.Digital healthcare systems often run on heterogeneous
devices in a distributed multi-cluster environment, and
maintain their healthcare policies for managing data, securing
information flow, and controlling interactions among systems
components. As healthcare systems become more digitally distributed,
lack of integration and safe interpretation between
heterogeneous systems clusters become problematic and might
lead to healthcare policy violations. Communication overhead
and high computation consumption might impact the system
at different levels and affect the flow of information among
system clusters. This paper provides a technical viewpoint of the
challenges, opportunities, and future work in digital healthcare
systems, focusing on the mechanisms of monitoring, detecting,
and recovering healthcare policy change/update and its imprint
on information flow
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