BIoMT: A Blockchain-Enabled Healthcare Architecture for Information Security in the Internet of Medical Things

Abstract

Rapid technological advancement has enabled modern healthcare systems to provide more sophisticated and real-time services on the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). The existing cloud-based, centralized IoMT architectures are vulnerable to multiple security and privacy problems. The blockchain-enabled IoMT is an emerging paradigm that can ensure the security and trustworthiness of medical data sharing in the IoMT networks. This article presents a private and easily expandable blockchain-based framework for the IoMT. The proposed framework contains several participants, including private blockchain, hospital management systems, cloud service providers, doctors, and patients. Data security is ensured by incorporating an attributebased encryption scheme. Furthermore, an IoT-friendly consensus algorithm is deployed to ensure fast block validation and high scalability in the IoMT network. The proposed framework can perform multiple healthcare-related services in a secure and trustworthy manner. The performance of blockchain read/write operations is evaluated in terms of transaction throughput and latency. Experimental outcomes indicate that the proposed scheme achieved an average throughput of 857 TPS and 151 TPS for read and write operations. The average latency is 61 ms and 16 ms for read and write operations, respectively.