Optimizing Proof-of-Work for Secure Health Data Blockchain Using Compute Unified Device Architecture

Abstract

We present a graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain design tailored for secure healthcare data management. Our Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA)-optimized PoW achieves throughput improvements of approximately 5× to 100× and reduces block-formation latency compared to Central Processing Unit (CPU) mining, making blockchain practical for high-volume health records. We benchmark against standard platforms—Bitcoin, known for its robust security but slow block times; Ethereum (legacy PoW), widely adopted yet less efficient; and Hyperledger Fabric, a permissioned enterprise framework—to quantify performance gains. Empirical tests show GPU-Advanced Encryption Standard in Counter Mode (AES-CTR) processes large health-record payloads in under one second, while our PoW mining throughput improves by approximately 5×, to 100× relative to unaccelerated baselines. We also evaluate end-to-end encryption latency and discuss privacy trade-offs, including that lightweight Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) yields minimal delay, whereas fully homomorphic methods, although privacy-preserving, remain impractical for real-time permissionless blockchains and are not included in our design. We explicitly address regulatory compliance: personal health data are stored off-chain (e.g., Interplanetary File System [IPFS]), preserving the “right to erasure” via deletion of off-chain records, and we implement strict access controls to meet Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) security rules. The design includes validator selection rules that limit Sybil attacks by requiring costly work (or stake) and supports post-quantum cryptographic agility (e.g., Falcon signatures). We define our research question (“Can CUDA-accelerated PoW enable a high-performance yet compliant health data blockchain?”) and hypothesize that GPU parallelism will yield substantial increases in speed. Results confirm our hypothesis: throughput and latency are significantly improved while preserving data privacy and compliance. This work makes a comprehensive contribution by detailing implementation methods, performance benchmarking, and analysis of security and legal requirements in a unified blockchain framework for healthcare.