HealthLink: A Cutting-Edge System for Secure Healthcare Data with IoT, Blockchain, and IPFS

Abstract

In today's rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, the integration of cutting-edge technologies such as IoT and wearable devices has led to significant advancements, particularly in the realm of remote patient monitoring. Despite these advancements, the traditional client/server architecture prevalent in current implementations presents substantial challenges related to security and privacy, leaving healthcare systems vulnerable to various attacks. Consequently, stringent regulatory and security measures are imperative to safeguard health data. To address these challenges and meet regulatory requirements, transitioning to a distributed architecture is essential. Blockchain technology, renowned for its distributed nature and robust security features, offers a promising solution to mitigate the security risks inherent in IoT-based systems. Motivated by these considerations, this study introduces HealthLink—a secure healthcare framework that seamlessly integrates IoT and Blockchain technologies.HealthLink is designed to facilitate remote patient monitoring, particularly for chronic diseases that require continuous oversight. The framework prioritizes security, scalability, and processing efficiency. Security measures include the use of re-encryption proxies combined with Blockchain for hash data storage, while access control is managed through smart contracts. To enhance Blockchain scalability, an off-chain IPFS-based database is employed for data storage, and the Ethereum Blockchain-based proof of authority is leveraged to expedite data storage processes. As a practical demonstration, we apply the HealthLink system to diabetes management, presenting execution results through system interfaces. Experimental findings highlight substantial enhancements in the security of healthcare systems compared to conventional methodologies, underscoring the potential of HealthLink to revolutionize remote patient monitoring and data security in healthcare.