Blockchain and Edge Computing for Decentralized EMRs Sharing in Federated Healthcare

Abstract

Blockchain and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) are newly emerging technologies with great potential to revolutionize healthcare. This paper proposes a new decentralized healthcare architecture for distributed Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) sharing among federated hospitals based on blockchain and MEC. Unlike the existing schemes that often rely on a third-party for healthcare management, we focus on a fully decentralized access control solution by using smart contracts that enable EMRs access verification at the edge of the network without requiring any central authority. Moreover, a decentralized interplanetary file system (IPFS) platform is also integrated with smart contracts over the MEC network, which significantly reduces data retrieval latency and enhances security for EMRs sharing. The experimental results and analysis show the superior performance of the proposed scheme over the existing ones in terms of reduced data retrieval latency, enhanced blockchain performance, and security guarantees.