The Security of Blockchain-Based Medical Systems: Research Challenges and Opportunities

【Author】 Liu, Qin; Liu, Yunlian; Luo, Min; He, Debiao; Wang, Huaqun; Choo, Kim-Kwang Raymond

【Source】IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL

【影响因子】4.802

【Abstract】The current COVID-19 pandemic has, perhaps, expedited the move to electronic medical systems (e.g., telemedicine). However, in the digitalization of healthcare services, we have to ensure the security and privacy of (sensitive) healthcare data, often stored locally in the hospital's server or remotely within a trusted cloud server. There have been many attempts to design blockchain-based approaches to support security and privacy in medical systems, and this is the focus of this article where we systematically review the existing literature on blockchain-based medical systems. We then categorize the existing security solutions into three categories, namely, 1) decentralized authentication, 2) access control, and 3) audit, and discuss the privacy protection technologies in blockchain-based healthcare systems. Based on our analysis, we identify a number of challenges, including performance limitations and inflexible audit, as well as future research opportunities (e.g., the need for lightweight security schemes for blockchain-based medical systems).

【Keywords】Blockchains; Security; Authentication; Hospitals; Peer-to-peer computing; Smart contracts; Servers; Blockchain; literature review; medical system; privacy; security

【发表时间】

【收录时间】2022-04-05

【文献类型】期刊

【主题类别】

区块链应用-医疗领域-