Proof of Concept of Scalable Integration of Internet of Things and Blockchain in Healthcare

Abstract

The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) brought innovation along with unprecedented benefits of convenience and efficacy in many operations that were otherwise very cumbersome. This innovation explosion has surfaced a new dimension of vulnerability and physical threat to the data integrity of IoT networks. Implementing conventional cryptographic algorithms on IoT devices is not future-proof as these devices are constrained in terms of computational power, performance, and memory. In this paper, we are proposing a novel framework, a unique model that integrates IoT networks with a blockchain to address potential privacy and security threats for data integrity. Smart contracts are instrumental in this integration process and they are used to handle device authentication, authorization and access-control, and data management. We further share a new design model for interfaces to integrate both platforms while highlighting its performance results over the existing models. With the incorporation of off-chain data storage into the framework, overall scalability of the system can be increased. Finally, our research concludes how the proposed framework can be fused virtually into any existing IoT applications with minimal modifications.