Blockchain for Software Maintainability in Healthcare

Abstract

In the healthcare industry, software quality plays a crucial role as it is used in almost all systems used for medical intervention. If the quality of healthcare software is not considered, it can potentially have a negative effect and may create catastrophic situations for the patient’s health and can seriously affect the organisation’s reputation. Maintainability is a key component of software quality, making up 80% of the total cost of the software development life cycle cost. Software maintainability can be assessed using metrics that are stored in a centralised location. Software maintainability metrics and related data are crucial. If attackers alter this data, it affects the overall quality of healthcare software. In order to solve this issue, we adapted blockchain-based storage, which offers the advantages of decentralisation, immutability, and transparency and is a promising solution. We used Storj, a blockchain-based decentralised file system, to secure the maintainability metrics and related data. According to the results, the maintainability metrics data stored in the blockchain-based decentralised file storage is more secure, redundant, and cost-effective than centralised storage.