Implementation of Blockchain Consortium to Prioritize Diabetes Patients' Healthcare in Pandemic Situations

Abstract

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder caused by high blood sugar levels, which can harm the kidneys, the heart, the eyes, and blood vessels. During the Covid-19 pandemic, diabetes patients were most affected. In the existing healthcare system, medical data is available in paper form or through a central server. Accessing the data from the central system and sharing it with all stakeholders would be a critical task during the pandemic. This research work deals with the design and implementation of a diabetes blockchain consortium. It can help all healthcare stakeholders to efficiently prioritize the needs of diabetes patients during a pandemic, such as oxygen beds, vaccinations, diabetes compensation, telemedicine, 5G-integrated remote location support, and other related records. The Ethereum sandbox simulation design is utilized to secure diabetes patients' healthcare records. The Interplanetary file system (IPFS) encrypts health data and sends it to the blockchain to ensure the privacy of personal healthcare information. The NEM symbol blockchain is used to develop this consortium as a proof-of-concept (PoC) model. Each stakeholder in a consortium is assigned NEM generated QR code to track records as a distributed ledger. A smart contract designed to run the diabetes blockchain application. Attribute-based encryption (ABE) authenticates users and restricts malicious nodes. Certainly, this research suggests aggregation of transactions and blocks in the blockchain, which would increase transaction speed, minimize transaction fees, and consume less power in a future blockchain design.