Amalgamation of Blockchain with resource-constrained IoT devices for healthcare applications – State of art, challenges and future directions

Abstract

Healthcare is an emerging sector with the integration of emerging technologies aiming to improve Quality of Life of an individual through various medical services. Most of the healthcare services work with sensitive information of patients either collected in real-time using body implanted sensors or through various IoT enabled medical devices during the diagnosis in a centrally controlled model. But, the traditional IoT based medical services suffer from several challenges such as data security, privacy, interoperability, single point of failure, scalability, and data integrity. However, by considering the advantages of Blockchain technology and the disadvantages of IoT systems, the amalgamation of a decentralised, distributed ledger technology with the IoT for various healthcare applications will strengthen the system by resolving the major challenges. Thus, this research article conducts a comprehensive survey on the integration of Blockchain and IoT (BCIoT) for Healthcare services, focusing mainly on existing approaches, possibilities, applications and challenges. First, we present a detailed overview of Blockchain, IoT and the motivation for BCIoT along with the survey on existing healthcare applications. Next we discuss the enabling platforms for BCIoT based healthcare services. For the better understanding, we review the role of BCIoT in Remote patient monitoring, electronic heath record management, Health asset tracing, Covid-19 infected patient contact tracking. Finally challenges and future directions are discussed to improve the Quality of Life of patients through Healthcare applications.

Keywords

• Blockchain
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Healthcare, Medical services
• Blockchain IoT integration
• Resource-constrained