Robotics systems of all types are revolutionizing a wide variety of industriesātransportation, manufacturing, and even healthcareāand yet, many essential ingredients for robotics systems in the real world are not technologically ready for deployment. Currently, robots lack the protocols and standards required to be safe and secure outside factories. In an attempt to close this gap, recent research has demonstrated the security benefits of combining robotics systems with blockchain-based and related technologies (e.g., smart contracts, zero-knowledge proofs, Merkle trees). In this perspective article, I argue that blockchain-based robotics is starting to provide innovative solutions (e.g., secure data sharing, consensus mechanisms, and new interaction methods) to urgent problems of robot security. I list the most important takeaways so far from this emerging field of research that I helped establish together with a growing community. I close the article by discussing the implications of the security challenges that the robotics research community is facing, and possible ways for us to move forward.
<p>Recent technological advancements have led to the development of new methods for managing organ donation systems, which aim to overcome the limitations of traditional centralized systems. To achieve increased transparency, security, and efficiency in the organ donation process, blockchain technology is being proposed as a replacement for these centralized systems. However, most previous works on organ donation systems have focused on using Ethereum-based blockchain solutions, which offer limited control, a fixed set of consensus protocols, and no support for concurrent executions. In contrast, our work has utilized the Hyperledger Fabric framework to develop a network model of the organ donation system. We have designed and deployed a prototype system with smart contracts using Amazon Managed Blockchain Service. Additionally, we have built a client application that uses the Fabric SDK to interact with the network and perform various actions. To evaluate the performance of our system, we conducted extensive testing using the Hyperledger Caliper benchmarking tool. In our test bench, the system achieved a peak actual send rate of 389.1 transactions per second (TPS) for creating new records and 508.4 TPS for reading records. At a send rate of 800 TPS, the system took an average of 12.16 seconds to serve a request for creating a record and an average of 3.71 seconds to serve a request for reading a record. Future work is required to extend the functionalities of the system and identify potential endorsers and managers for this type of controlled blockchain network.</p>
Alessandro Anselmo, Marco Materazzo, Nicola Di Lorenzo, Bruno Sensi Ā· 10 authors
In the last few years, innovative technology and health care digitalization played a major role in all medical fields and a great effort worldwide to manage this large amount of data, in terms of security and digital privacy has been made by different national health systems. Blockchain technology, a peer-to-peer distributed database without centralized authority, initially applied to Bitcoin protocol, soon gained popularity, thanks to its distributed immutable nature in several non-medical fields. Therefore, the aim of the present review (PROSPERO NĀ° CRD42022316661) is to establish a putative future role of blockchain and distribution ledger technology (DLT) in the organ transplantation field and its role to overcome inequalities. Preoperative assessment of the deceased donor, supranational crossover programs with the international waitlist databases, and reduction of black-market donations and counterfeit drugs are some of the possible applications of DLT, thanks to its distributed, efficient, secure, trackable, and immutable nature to reduce inequalities and discrimination.
Over the past decade, the blockchain technology has gained a significant traction with the introduction of the ābitcoinā, the first cryptocurrency back in 2008. The rapid growth of ābitcoinā as a currency and the Bitcoin as a protocol has served as a wake-up call to the IT community which began to realize the real potential of blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is capable of filling many gaps that traditional IT solutions struggle to address. In the other hand the increasing complexity of adjudicating health insurance claims is an urge to introduce more secure and efficient claims adjudication system. Blockchain technology has the potential to reshape the claims adjudication process not only due to its decentralized and tamper-proof features but to its consensus protocols and much more other characteristics. This article studies some of the most recent researches on blockchain solution for health insurance claim adjudication, evaluates the its feasibility and identifies areas where blockchain technology could be applied to improve efficiency and accuracy. This study will also examine the potential benefits and challenges of implementing a blockchain-based system, like reducing administrative costs and improving fraud detection.
P. Sheela Rani, M. Harini, N. Nandhitha., Teena A. Naahz. G.
The digital world is a vast and ever- evolving ecosystem that encompasses a wide range of technologies, applications, and platforms. Blockchain has played a significant role in bringing the healthcare business forward. Blockchain may significantly enhance the traceability, efficiency, and safety of confidential data such as organ donation and transplantation, as well as the administration of electronic health data. This paper presents a secure and efficient web application for organ donation that uses private Ethereum blockchain technology to create a proof of authority (PoA) model for this consortium and also to automate a number of processes, including matching donors and recipients. The fairness of all the entitiesāpatient, donor, hospital, or insurance companyāinvolved in the system is guaranteed without the involvement of a third party. The security and privacy of the patientās details are protected. The logic of the application is implemented using smart contracts and deployed in Ganache. It depicts various interactions and transactions among the participants, thus helping to automate these processes, promote transparency, improve efficiency, and minimise service time.
The organ donation and transplantation methods in use today present a variety of requirements and barriers as well as technical, clinical, ethical, and legal limitations regards registration, matching of donors and recipients, organ procurement, delivery, and transplantation. In order to provide a fair and effective procedure, a complete framework for organ donation and transplantation is necessary as well as to enhance patient satisfaction and trust. In this paper, we describe a completely decentralised, secure, trackable, auditable, private, and trustworthy private Ethereum blockchain-based system for coordinating organ donation and transplantation. We create smart contracts and outline the development, testing, and verification of six algorithms. By performing research on privacy, security, and confidentiality and contrasting our solution with the available alternatives, we assess the effectiveness of the suggested solution.
Dounia Marbouh, Mecit Can Emre Simsekler, Khaled Salah, Raja Jayaraman Ā· 5 authors
Medical errors are recognized as major threats to patient safety worldwide. Lack of streamlined communication and an inability to share and exchange data are among the contributory factors affecting patient safety. To address these challenges, blockchain can be utilized to ensure a secure, transparent and decentralized data exchange among stakeholders. In this study, we discuss six use cases that can benefit from blockchain to gain operational effectiveness and efficiency in the patient safety context. The role of stakeholders, system requirements, opportunities and challenges are discussed in each use case in detail. Connecting stakeholders and data in complex healthcare systems, blockchain has the potential to provide an accountable and collaborative milieu for the delivery of safe care. By reviewing the potential of blockchain in six use cases, we suggest that blockchain provides several benefits, such as an immutable and transparent structure and decentralized architecture, which may help transform health care and enhance patient safety. While blockchain offers remarkable opportunities, it also presents open challenges in the form of trust, privacy, scalability and governance. Future research may benefit from including additional use cases and developing smart contracts to present a more comprehensive view on potential contributions and challenges to explore the feasibility of blockchain-based solutions in the patient safety context.
Rapid advancements to digitization in Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems and record sharing have happened at the cost of uncontrolled access and insecure control to the patientās sensitive health information. This is due to existing centralized systems and intermediaries sharing the medical records with multiple stakeholders causing single point of failure, data tampering, correlation attack, loss of privacy and transparency. Besides this, patientās consent for personal health record sharing is neglected or restricted to one-time consent policy that fails to produce tamper-proof evidence in an irrefutable way. With the emergence of promising distributed ledger technology like blockchain makes it easy to realize the trust factors required for patient-controlled record sharing without relying on a centralized third parties.This work proposes a smart contract based blockchain solution/framework for patient consent management to achieve a secure health record exchange and its access in automated way. The proposed solution is implemented on a public blockchain called as Ethereum. The security analysis of smart contracts for potential vulnerabilities is conducted using auditing tools like Oyente and Surya. Furthermore, the implemented solution is evaluated in terms of throughput, average latency using a Hyperledger Caliper benchmarking tool. Finally, the security and performance analysis illustrates that proposed framework is suitable for real-world patient-centric health record sharing in EHRs.
Abstract This paper argues that the widespread belief that interactions between blockchains and their users are trustāfree is inaccurate and misleading, since this belief not only overlooks the vital role played by trust in the lack of knowledge and control but also conceals the moral and normative relevance of relying on blockchain applications. The paper reaches this argument by providing a close philosophical examination of the concept referred to as trust in blockchain technology, clarifying the trustor group, the structure, and the normatively loaded nature of this trust relation. The paper ends by critically reflecting on two of the most promising values (decentralization and transparency) that can invite usersā trust in blockchain technology, arguing that there is a tension between the pressing values that are intended to be achieved by developers and the predicament situations caused by current blockchain implementations.
In todayās time healthcare is a sensitive subject for anyone living in any part of the world. Medical science works on enhancing the quality and period of life. To provide healthy life at times people might have to undergo surgeries or transplantation as well. The world has improved a lot in technologies and with the advancement; security in the process has been major concern. In times of need for organs or blood, itās crucial to have a secure and transparent system. People tend to panic in the situation and information about organ or blood donors is not easily accessible when needed. Thus, in this paper a web application is proposed for both organ and blood donors in one place. Or(organ) and B(blood) together is combined to make OraB - a platform for building a community of donors. The aim is to make a decentralized web application that will be a reliable platform for connecting donee with the donors. As itās a decentralized web app, it will draw out the involvement of a third-party networks completely. Vanilla JS has been used for the front-end, Web3.js has been used for the back-end, and its smart contract is made using javascript similar language solidity. This is a blockchain-based project which assures complete security and transparency in tracking the transaction of organ donation and is quite economical.
Lodovico Parmegiani, A. Arnone, Silvia Bernardi, Walter Ciampaglia Ā· 7 authors
Abstract Study question To date, no publications exist describing Blockchain in IVF (Hickman, 2020). Can Blockchain technology be used for traceability and accountability in IVF laboratory procedures? Summary answer Blockchain is an easy-to-implement technology for incorruptible traceability of a āVirus-Freeā vitrification/warming procedure. What is known already In healthcare, Blockchain can become a tool to address challenges regarding sensitive data-sharing and traceability of medical and laboratory procedures. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many authors warned about the role of LN2 as a potential vector for virus contamination, and vitrification and warming were identified as critical procedures for risk of contamination for environments, surfaces, operators and cells. In this study we describe the first application of Blockchain in IVF for incorruptible traceability of a āVirus-Freeā vitrification/warming procedure based on the combined use of UVC-Sterilized Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) and CE Medical Devices (CE-MD). Study design, size, duration Report on 2346 Ethereum Blockchain data transactions for IVF laboratory procedures mined from 01/10/2019 to 31/12/2021. The procedures were oocyte/embryo vitrification, warming or handling in LN2 after cryopreservation. For each vitrification, warming and handling a UVC-sterilized batch of LN2 was associated with the code assigned to the vitrification/warming procedure and with the lot number of the single-use sterile vitrification box (N-Sleeve). The clinical results obtained from warmed oocytes/embryos were observed as completion of this process. Participants/materials, setting, methods A Blockchain trusted āVirus-Freeā vitrification/warming programme was set up using a specifically designed CE-MD N-Bath-System (Nterilizer-Italy). Each procedure was traced by the CE-MDās software and a dedicated web application. Finally, data were made incorruptible by Ethereum Blockchain transactions. Before oocyte/embryo warming, vitrification carrier washing with UVC-sterilized LN2 was performed in accordance with Parmegiani et al (2012) and recent international anti-Covid guidelines. Main results and the role of chance Of the 2346 Blockchain transactions 1268 regarded vitrification and cryopreserved specimen handling procedures; 1078 transactions were frozen cell warmings (308 oocytes and 770 embryos) performed on 799 patients. To date, 445 pregnancies have been obtained (pregnancy rate: 41% per cycle; 56% per patient) and 219 babies have been born. Limitations, reasons for caution Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency which is highly susceptible to cost changes. Other public or private Blockchains may be used in future in healthcare with more stable transaction costs. Wider implications of the findings This is the first evidence of the application of Blockchain in IVF and many others will probably follow. Blockchain immutable records of LN2 sterilization combined with procedure codes and disposable lots represent incorruptible traces for āVirus-Freeā vitrification/warming. During this pandemic 219 babies were born from cryopreservation procedures powered by Blockchain. Trial registration number Not Applicable
Rui Xing, Zhou Su, Tom H. Luan, Qichao Xu Ā· 6 authors
Vehicular networks which are paralyzed by natural disasters is faced with communication dilemma. Through building a decentralized communication network, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with high mobility and flexibility are expected to be the solution to the post-disaster vehicular networks. The blockchain technology has been widely used in UAV networks to provision the prompt security of distributed communications. However, existing works ignore the dynamics of the network in that due to high mobility, distributed UAVs cannot timely connect to the backbone to synchronize blockchain transactions. The delay of synchronization can result in severe security issues. On addressing the issues, this paper proposes UAVs-aided blockchain offline transactions to ensure the security and effectiveness of delay-tolerant blockchain transactions when UAVs are offline. In specific, we consider vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) charging transactions in post-disaster vehicular networks. By establishing offline channel between charging and discharging electric vehicles (EVs) by hashed time locked contract (HTLC), we design a UAVs aided penalty algorithm with accountable assertions to prevent deposit forging attacks and double-spending attacks. In addition, considering the selfishness of EVs, a Stackelberg game based incentive scheme is developed to encourage EVs to participate the offline transactions and to improve their trust values. By suing the mechanisms above, our proposal addresses the security of offline EV charging, as well as the selfishness of participant. Using extensive simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme can realize secure transactions among EVs and can effectively improve the utilities of EVs through the comparison with conventional schemes.
Abstract Robot Operating System (ROS) has brought great potential for automation in all fields involved in production activities, which greatly improves productivity and simplifies operations that belonged to humans originally. However, ROS is highly dependent on communication but lacks secure data sharing mechanisms. Therefore, when it comes to multi-robots interaction scenarios, there are severe challenges in ensuring the safe and trustworthy exchange of specified confidential data among multi-robots. The reliability of data also needs to be considered carefully. This paper proposes a solution to this problem based on blockchain technology. We present a general secure and convenient authorization framework named AuthROS for ROS nodes with absolute security and high availability based on private Ethereum network and SM algorithms. This framework is capable of meeting the requirements for immutability and security of confidential data exchange in nodes of ROS of any size. An authority granting and identity identifying mechanism is proposed and integrated into the Ethereum smart contract to execute atomically to ensure the trustworthiness exchange of data and no third-party participation. At the same time, a key exchange based on SM2 and plaintext encryption mechanism based on SM4 is proposed to ensure the data transmission security. Furthermore, a data digest uploading scheme is adopted to improve the efficiency of querying and data uploading to the Ethereum network. Based on all of mechanisms mentioned above, AuthROS can play a role in the scenario where data transmitted among robots need to be recorded and maintain immobility. Experimental results demonstrated that AuthROS is equipped with excellent security, good time performance along with Nodes Forging resistance. We believe that AuthROS is the first secure data sharing framework for Robots loaded with ROS. We open sourced AuthROS at https://github.com/RobAI-Lab/ROS-Chain.
Dinith Asokan, Justin Sunny, V. Madhusudanan Pillai, Hiran V. Nath
Purpose Blood cold chain (BCC) represents a system for preserving the blood during its journey from the donor to the ultimate transfusion site. Existing BCCs have many drawbacks related to information transparency and information security. Secured and real-time information sharing in BCC can bring several benefits. The purpose of this paper is to summarise the issues in typical BCCs and to explore the scope of blockchain in the management of BCCs. Design/methodology/approach Issues in the existing BCCs are identified through a narrative review. To explain the potential of blockchain in mitigating these issues, a blockchain-based traceability solution is demonstrated with respect to a particular BCC scenario. The BCC management system discussed in this study makes use of the Ethereum blockchainās smart contract feature and internet of things (IoT) technology. The smart contract is written in the solidity programming language and tested and validated using the Remix integrated development environment. Findings BCCs are concerned with several issues both from technical and non-technical perspectives. Blockchain technology is capable of troubleshooting the issues in the existing BCCs. Combining blockchain and IoT technology enables real-time information sharing among the entities. The demonstration presented in this work depicts how the blockchain-based smart contract can support operations in a typical BCC. Research limitations/implications This paper explores the scope of blockchain in BCCs through a demonstration. To get insights into its technical and economical feasibilities, further investigations are needed. Originality/value Blockchain-based traceability system presented in this work can be adopted in BCCs to ensure the quality of blood or blood products. Blockchain-based smart contracts can aid the BCCs to achieve a proper balance between blood shortage and outdating.
Jack Huang, Yuan Wei Qi, Muhammad Rizwan Asghar, Andrew Meads Ā· 5 authors
Abstract In New Zealand, the demand for healthcare services has grown gradually in the last decade, and it is likely to increase further. This had led to issues such as increasing treatment costs and processing time for the patients. To address the growing pressure in the healthcare sector, and its fragmented IT landscape that compounds the problems further, the New Zealand Ministry of Health aims to establish a shared Electronic Health Record (EHR) system that integrates all the major healthcare organisations such as hospitals, medical centres, and specialists. Due to its characteristics, blockchain technology could be a potential platform for building such largeāscale health systems. Here, MedBloc, a blockchainābased secure EHR system that enables patients and healthcare providers to access and share health records while providing usability, security, and privacy is presented. MedBloc captures a longitudinal view of the patientsā health story and empowers the patients to regulate their own data by allowing them to give or withdraw consent for healthcare providers to access their records. To preserve the patientsā privacy and protect their health data, MedBloc uses an encryption scheme to secure records and smart contracts to enforce access control to prevent unauthorised access.
Resource-based consensus is the backbone of permissionless distributed ledger systems. The security of such protocols relies fundamentally on the level of resources actively engaged in the system. The variety of different resources (and related proof protocols, some times referred to as PoX in the literature) raises the fundamental question whether it is possible to utilize many of them in tandem and build multi-resource consensus protocols. The challenge in combining different resources is to achieve fungibility between them, in the sense that security would hold as long as the cumulative adversarial power across all resources is bounded. In this work, we put forth Minotaur, a multi-resource blockchain consensus protocol that combines proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS), and we prove it optimally fungible. At the core of our design, Minotaur operates in epochs while continuously sampling the active computational power to provide a fair exchange between the two resources, work and stake. Further, we demonstrate the ability of Minotaur to handle a higher degree of work fluctuation as compared to the Bitcoin blockchain; we also generalize Minotaur to any number of resources. We demonstrate the simplicity of Minotaur via implementing a full stack client in Rust (available open source). We use the client to test the robustness of Minotaur to variable mining power and combined work/stake attacks and demonstrate concrete empirical evidence towards the suitability of Minotaur to serve as the consensus layer of a real-world blockchain.
Nihar Ranjan Pradhan, D. Anil Kumar, Akhilendra Pratap Singh
Tracking the shipment of blood is difficult, and violation of maintaining critical parameters leads to wastage and spoilage. IoT sensors can be used to monitor temperature, pressure, humidity, exposed to light, broken seal, etc. In our work, we implemented and tested an Ethereum based smart contract in solidity platform. Although several research works have been carried out in the blood bank inventory system, few of them focus on its security, transparency, and traceability. Health record sharing without modification is essential. Blockchain-based blood bank systems can resolve the need for individuals to access, trace, manage, and share their health and blood-related information which is immutable. Blood traceability can increase the availability systems to blood bank system and determines the number of quantities to transport from cities to a rural area. Delay in availability, results in delay in surgery or may lead to death. The blockchain-based system is a confidential environment which acts as a communication hub between donors, doctors, testing labs, and recipients or patients. To address these issues, we have designed a blockchain-based solution for the blood bank system.
Fidelia Cascini, Flavia Beccia, Francesco Andrea Causio, Andrea Gentili Ā· 7 authors
The recent progress of genomics research is providing unprecedented insight into human genetic variance, susceptibility to disease and risk stratification. Current trends predict that a massive amount of genomic data will be produced in the upcoming years which, when coupled with the fast-paced development of the field, will create new social, ethical, and legal challenges. In the complex legislative environment of the European Union, genomic data sharing policies will have to weigh the benefits of scientific discovery against the ethical risks posed by the act of sharing sensitive data. In this complex, interconnected environment, blockchain provides a unique and novel solution to accountability, traceability, and transparency issues regarding genomic data sharing. Implementing a distributed ledger technology-based database could empower both patients and citizens to responsibly use genomic data pertaining to them because it allows for a higher degree of control over the recipients of their data and their uses. The blockchain technology will engage both data owners and policymakers to address the multiple issues of genomic data sharing and allow us to redefine the way we look at genomics.
Todayās organ donation and transplantation systems pose different requirements and challenges in terms of registration, donor-recipient matching, organ removal, organ delivery, and transplantation with legal, clinical, ethical, and technical constraints. Therefore, an end to-end organ donation and transplantation system is required to guarantee a fair and efficient process to enhance patient experience and trust. We propose a private Ethereum blockchain based solution to enable organ donation and transplantation management in a manner that is fully secure, traceable, auditable, private, and trustworthy. We develop smart contracts that ensure the data provenance by recording events automatically. We present algorithms with their implementation, testing, and validation details. We evaluate the performance of the proposed solution by performing privacy, security, and confidentiality analyses as well as comparing our solution with the existing solutions. Key Words: organ, donation, private, confidentiality
Abstract In recent years, the rapid development in information technologies appears in the form of digitalization, all of the processes in the health domain. Among the stateāofāart, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technologies are among the most mentioned. In addition, the exponential increase in data kept in the electronic environment causes traditional central applications to face new challenges. The most important of these are accountability, transparency, security, cost, and time efficiency. In this study, a model based on blockchain technologies has been proposed to increase the transparency, accountability, and security of multiāstakeholder shared medical data by using smart contracts (SCs). In the first part, there are briefly introduced the current situation of the health domain, blockchain technology, hyperledger fabric (HLF) and SCs. Afterward, in line with the latest technological developments, the studies carried out using the blockchain framework related to organ/tissue transplantation were examined. Lastly, the proposed framework was designed based on blockchain technologies for organ/tissue transplantation by using the HLF environment. The blockchain technology not only provides more visibility, more security, and better outcomes but also enables to store data securely and cheaply without allocating extra resources to a trusted authority. Thus, it can be ensured that the system is more transparent and more accountable.