A Blockchain-enabled Architecture for IoMT Device Authentication

Abstract

The healthcare sector is rapidly integrating the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) technologies and adopting new practices regarding how patient data are collected, processed, and stored. Although various medical device authentication mechanisms have been proposed so far, most of them are power consuming, not cost-effective, or face scalability issues. We propose a novel IoMT authentication framework incorporating new concepts and technologies such as self-sovereign identity, zero-knowledge proofs, and blockchain technology to cover this gap. The architecture is built upon key elements of the healthcare ecosystem (hospital entities, device manufacturers, medical devices) and provides multientity IoMT authentication functionalities with revocation. We demonstrate the proposed architecture's efficiency through a proof of concept implementation based on Hyperledger Aries, Indy, and Ursa.