Blockchain-Based Method for Spatial Retrieval and Verification of Remote Sensing Images

Remote sensing image is a vital basis for land management decisions. The protection of remote sensing images has seen the application of blockchain's notarization function by many scholars. Yet, research on efficient retrieval of such images on the blockchain remains sparse. Addressing this issue, this paper introduces a blockchain-based spatial index verification method using Hyperledger Fabric. It linearizes the spatial information of remote sensing images via Geohash and integrates it with LSM trees for effective retrieval and verification. The system also incorporates IPFS as an underlying storage unit for Hyperledger Fabric, ensuring the safe storage and transmission of images. The experiments indicate that this method significantly reduces the latency in data retrieval and verification without impacting the write performance of Hyperledger Fabric, enhancing throughput and providing a solid foundation for efficient blockchain-based verification of remote sensing images in land registry systems.

Moving Beyond Proof of Concept and Pilots to Mainstream: Discovery and Lessons from a Reference Framework and Implementation

Blockchain technology is a radical innovation with the potential to disrupt and re-imagine more collaborative established business structures and processes. Significant advances, particularly in the payments space, include newer, faster, and less costly options for moving money. The underlying blockchain technology can be used for broader use cases spanning several verticals, including healthcare - although its adoption here is less than complete. Numerous proofs-of-concept and pilots have been executed and are increasing, although enterprise blockchain applications in healthcare at the production scale enabling transformative constituent processes are limited. In this article, the authors analyze the blockchain in healthcare literature for critical success factors and add practitioner views on crossing the chasm from proof-of-concept and pilots to a transformational scale. We explore 24 articles for key inflections for scale and highlight the need for a multifaceted execution framework to resolve the practical barriers to enabling reimagined network-based blockchain use cases for efficiencies, particularly in disparate health systems such as the U.S. In addition, we introduce the blockchain discovery framework to make this emerging technology meet the mainstream operations at scale systematically and in a stair-stepped and future-proofed manner, addressing practical stakeholder concerns. Finally, the authors present a reference case study discovered through the framework of one such healthcare administrative process for a scaled reimagined implementation. Healthcare executives and portfolio managers will benefit from these insights and help to increase the enterprise adoption of this inevitable technology of the future.

Plan Language Summary

This article presents a practitioner's view of operating in emerging technology, exploring and advancing blockchain-based transformation in healthcare. Blockchain technology is maturing quickly, with financial technology (aka fintech) leading the way with efficient options for moving money, particularly in the public permissionless blockchain segment. The underlying technology allows for a broader set of capabilities, including provenance, data sharing, immutability, non-repudiation, and auditability, which provides for complete rethinking of existing business processes. These features can help to reimagine a more comprehensive set of use cases in many disciplines, including healthcare. However, enterprise adoption needs to catch up.

Efficient Internet-of-Things Cyberattack Depletion Using Blockchain-Enabled Software-Defined Networking and 6G Network Technology

Low-speed internet can negatively impact incident response by causing delayed detection, ineffective response, poor collaboration, inaccurate analysis, and increased risk. Slow internet speeds can delay the receipt and analysis of data, making it difficult for security teams to access the relevant information and take action, leading to a fragmented and inadequate response. All of these factors can increase the risk of data breaches and other security incidents and their impact on IoT-enabled communication. This study combines virtual network function (VNF) technology with software -defined networking (SDN) called virtual network function software-defined networking (VNFSDN). The adoption of the VNFSDN approach has the potential to enhance network security and efficiency while reducing the risk of cyberattacks. This approach supports IoT devices that can analyze large volumes of data in real time. The proposed VNFSDN can dynamically adapt to changing security requirements and network conditions for IoT devices. VNFSDN uses threat filtration and threat-capturing and decision-driven algorithms to minimize cyber risks for IoT devices and enhance network performance. Additionally, the integrity of IoT devices is safeguarded by addressing the three risk categories of data manipulation, insertion, and deletion. Furthermore, the prioritized delegated proof of stake (PDPoS) consensus variant is integrated with VNFSDN to combat attacks. This variant addresses the scalability issue of blockchain technology by providing a safe and adaptable environment for IoT devices that can quickly be scaled up and down to pull together the changing demands of the organization, allowing IoT devices to efficiently utilize resources. The PDPoS variant provides flexibility to IoT devices to proactively respond to potential security threats, preventing or mitigating the impact of cyberattacks. The proposed VNFSDN dynamically adapts to the changing security requirements and network conditions, improving network resiliency and enabling proactive threat detection. Finally, we compare the proposed VNFSDN to existing state-of-the-art approaches. According to the results, the proposed VNFSDN has a 0.08 ms minimum response time, a 2% packet loss rate, 99.5% network availability, a 99.36% threat detection rate, and a 99.77% detection accuracy with 1% malicious nodes.

Blockchain technology and federated machine learning for collaborative initiatives in orthodontics and craniofacial health

There is a paucity of largescale collaborative initiatives in orthodontics and craniofacial health. Such nationally representative projects would yield findings that are generalizable. The lack of large-scale collaborative initiatives in the field of orthodontics creates a deficiency in study outcomes that can be applied to the population at large. The objective of this study is to provide a narrative review of potential applications of blockchain technology and federated machine learning to improve collaborative care. We conducted a narrative review of articles published from 2018 to 2023 to provide a high level overview of blockchain technology, federated machine learning, remote monitoring, and genomics and how they can be leveraged together to establish a patient centered model of care. To strengthen the empirical framework for clinical decision making in healthcare, we suggest use of blockchain technology and integrating it with federated machine learning. There are several challenges to adoption of these technologies in the current healthcare ecosystem. Nevertheless, this may be an ideal time to explore how best we can integrate these technologies to deliver high quality personalized care. This article provides an overview of blockchain technology and federated machine learning and how they can be leveraged to initiate collaborative projects that will have the patient at the center of care.

Agri-Food Value Chain Traceability Using Blockchain Technology: Portuguese Hams' Production Scenario

The globalization of food markets has led companies to buy products not only locally, but also from other corners of the world. This has introduced complexity into supply chains, as products have to move longer distances and pass through more companies before reaching the end consumer. The meat industry has been no different. Events such as animal disease outbreaks have diminished consumer confidence in the industry and the supply chain. Coupled with this, consumers started demanding "more transparent" meat products. This has led companies to think about new traceability systems, which continue to enforce food safety and health rules, but at the same time enhance and make transparent to the consumer the origin and constitution of their products. This article proposes a traceability system in the agri-food (meat industry) with a multi-chain architecture, among them, blockchain. The use of blockchain in the traceability system helped to mitigate the omission of relevant data for the traceability process, allowing us to guarantee the immutability, reliability, and transparency of the data along the value chain. At the same time, the system was able to reduce the time of the traceability process by giving the user the possibility to access the traced information via a unique product identifier.

GM-Ledger: Blockchain-Based Certificate Authentication for International Food Trade

Maritime transportation plays a critical role for many Arab countries and their food security and has evolved into a complex system that involves a plethora of supply chain stakeholders spread around the globe. This inherent complexity brings huge security challenges, including cargo loss and high burdens in cargo document inspection. The emerging blockchain technology provides a promising tool to build a unified maritime cargo tracking system critical for cargo security. This is because blockchains are a tamper-proof distributed ledger technology that can store and track data in a secure and transparent manner. Using the State of Qatar as a case study, this research introduces the Global Maritime Ledger (GM-Ledger), which will aid authorities in verifying, signing and transacting food certificates in an efficient manner. The methodology of this research includes reviewing past publications, identifying the requirements of various players in the Qatari food import-export industry and then creating a smart contract framework that will efficiently manage the work with necessary human intervention as and when required. The result of this work is the formation of a solid framework that can be employed in future works. This work realized that employing web3 solutions for the food import sector is highly viable and that with the right social, economic and policy reforms, it is possible to transform the entire food system to bear healthy transparency and power balance in global supply chains. In conclusion, this study argues that BCT has the ability to assist the government and other players to minimize fraud and maximize food supply chain stakeholder participation.

Implementation of Blockchain Technology Across Different Domains of Dentistry: A Systematic Review

Blockchain technology has gained attention as a potential solution for improving data security, privacy, and interoperability in various industries, including healthcare. In the field of dentistry, the implementation of blockchain holds promise for transforming dental practice and management. However, a comprehensive evaluation of the existing literature regarding the implementation of blockchain technology in dental practice is lacking. This systematic review aimed to assess the current evidence on the implementation of blockchain technology in dental practice and management. A systematic literature search was conducted using major databases to identify relevant studies. The search strategy included keywords related to blockchain technology and dentistry. The investigation was performed as per the PRISMA guidelines. Studies reporting on the implementation, adoption, and outcomes of blockchain technology in dental practice and management were included. Quality assessment and data extraction were performed following predefined criteria. The initial search yielded a multitude of articles, and after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, six studies were included in the systematic review. The studies explored various aspects of blockchain technology implementation in dental practice, including data security, interoperability, supply chain management, and patient consent management. Furthermore, the use of blockchain-based systems showed potential benefits in enhancing supply chain management efficiency and patient consent authentication. This systematic review provided insights into the current state of blockchain technology implementation in dental practice and management. The findings suggested that blockchain technology has the potential to enhance data security, privacy, and interoperability in dental practices. However, further research and real-world implementation studies are needed to fully understand the impact of blockchain technology on dental practice and to address the existing challenges.

Role of Incentives in the Use of Blockchain-Based Platforms for Sharing Sensitive Health Data: Experimental Study

BACKGROUND

Blockchain is an emerging technology that enables secure and decentralized approaches to reduce technical risks and governance challenges associated with sharing data. Although blockchain-based solutions have been suggested for sharing health information, it is still unclear whether a suitable incentive mechanism (intrinsic or extrinsic) can be identified to encourage individuals to share their sensitive data for research purposes.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to investigate how important extrinsic incentives are and what type of incentive is the best option in blockchain-based platforms designed for sharing sensitive health information.

METHODS

In this study, we conducted 3 experiments with 493 individuals to investigate the role of extrinsic incentives (ie, cryptocurrency, money, and recognition) in data sharing with research organizations.

RESULTS

The findings highlight that offering different incentives is insufficient to encourage individuals to use blockchain technology or to change their perceptions about the technology's premise for sharing sensitive health data. The results demonstrate that individuals still attribute serious risks to blockchain-based platforms. Privacy and security concerns, trust issues, lack of knowledge about the technology, lack of public acceptance, and lack of regulations are reported as top risks. In terms of attracting people to use blockchain-based platforms for data sharing in health care, we show that the effects of extrinsic motivations (cryptoincentives, money, and status) are significantly overshadowed by inhibitors to technology use.

CONCLUSIONS

We suggest that before emphasizing the use of various types of extrinsic incentives, the users must be educated about the capabilities and benefits offered by this technology. Thus, an essential first step for shifting from an institution-based data exchange to a patient-centric data exchange (using blockchain) is addressing technology inhibitors to promote patient-driven data access control. This study shows that extrinsic incentives alone are inadequate to change users' perceptions, increase their trust, or encourage them to use technology for sharing health data.

Interconnection between the role of blockchain technologies, supply chain integration, and circular economy: A case of small and medium-sized enterprises in Pakistan

Increased industrialization has led to unprecedented resource depletion on a global scale. The current state of affairs has compelled practitioners and academics to investigate the role of sustainable technologies in greening the operations of businesses. Previous studies have attempted to examine the number of operational aspects for their role in making firms sustainable, yet the utility of blockchain technologies is in its infancy. The role of BT in enhancing integration across supply chains has been in the limelight in the recent past. At the same time, its ability to cause sustainable supply chain performance (SSCP) in sync with the circular economy (CE) and supply chain integration (SCI) has largely remained unexplored. Therefore, this study intends to examine the association between blockchain technologies (BTs) and SSCPs through integration to fill the empirical gaps. The study was pursued to investigate the moderating role of the CE on the relationship between multiple extents of SCI and SSCP. Based on dynamic capability theory (DCT), the study considered BT a dynamic resource. BTs are used to integrate and reenergize the relationships with upstream and downstream channel members in pursuit of sustainable performance outcomes. The study opted for a cross-sectional design, where data was collected through convenience sampling from 475 managers from SMEs operating across Pakistan. PLS-SEM was used to analyze the data and to generate the required empirical outcomes. Study results favored the significant association between BT and SSCP, followed by a significant mediating role of SCI dimensions and moderating role of the CE. The study's findings propagate the utility of BTs adoption for SMEs, which holds the potential for firms to achieve system-wide integration to achieve sustainable outcomes. The given empirical investigation holds valuable insights for practitioners and scholars intending to pursue research on the subject matter.

Comprehensive review for healthcare data quality challenges in blockchain technology

There are several features inherent in blockchain, including decentralized storage, distributed ledger, immutability, security and authentication, and it has shifted away from the hype to be used practically in different industries, such as in the healthcare sector. The use of blockchain technology has allowed the provision of improved services to industries. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how the use of blockchain is influenced by data quality issues in the healthcare industry. The article is structured as a systematic literature review study that uses several articles issued in various databases from 2016 onwards. In this review study, 65 articles were chosen and grouped into a single key aspect of the challenge in the healthcare sector. The findings obtained were analyzed based on factors in three domains, classified as issues pertinent to the adoption, operational and technological domains. This review study aims to use the findings to provide support to the practitioners, stakeholders and professionals, whose purpose is to carry out and manage transformation projects pertinent to blockchain in the field of healthcare. In addition, the organizations would be facilitated in their decision-making processes when the potential blockchain users are made to comprehend the implicit factors related to blockchain.

Dentistry in the Digital Age: Embracing Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology can revolutionize the dental industry by offering secure and efficient data management and patient care solutions. This editorial explores how blockchain can benefit dentistry, including enhancing data security and privacy, streamlining interoperability, facilitating supply chain management, and empowering patients. Blockchain ensures tamper-proof and authorized access to patient data, enabling dentists and patients to have peace of mind regarding data security. Interoperability between dental systems can be improved through blockchain, allowing seamless data exchange and care coordination. By leveraging the transparency and immutability of blockchain, supply chain management in dentistry can be enhanced to ensure the authenticity of dental products. Moreover, blockchain empowers patients by granting them control over their healthcare data, promoting transparency and trust in the dental industry. However, challenges such as scalability, energy consumption, regulatory compliance, and data governance need to be addressed for successful implementation. Collaboration among stakeholders, education, and the development of regulatory frameworks are crucial for maximizing the benefits of blockchain technology in dentistry. By embracing blockchain, the dental industry can create a future where patient care is secure, efficient, and patient-centric.

Widening Blockchain Technology toward Access Control for Service Provisioning in Cellular Networks

The attention on blockchain technology (BCT) to create new forms of relational reliance has seen an explosion of new applications and initiatives, to assure decentralized security and trust. Its potential as a game-changing technology relates to how data gets distributed and replicated over several organizations and countries. This paper provides an introduction to BCT, as well as a review of its technological aspects. A concrete application of outsource access control and pricing procedures in cellular networks, based on a decentralized access control-as-a-service solution for private cellular networks, is also presented. The application can be used by service and content providers, to provide new business models. The proposed method removes the single point of failure from conventional centralized access control systems, increasing scalability while decreasing operational complexity, regarding access control and pricing procedures. Design and implementation details of the new method in a real-world scenario using a private cellular network and a BCT system that enables smart contracts are also provided.

Adoption, implementation, definitions, and future of blockchain technology in ophthalmology

In this era of cutting-edge research and digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly penetrated all subspecialties, including ophthalmology. Managing AI data and analytics is cumbersome, and implementing blockchain technology has made this task less challenging. Blockchain technology is an advanced mechanism with a robust database that allows the unambiguous sharing of widespread information within a business model or network. The data is stored in blocks that are linked together in chains. Since its inception in 2008, blockchain technology has grown over the years, and its novel use in ophthalmology has been less well documented. This section on current ophthalmology discusses the novel use and future of blockchain technology for intraocular lens power calculation and refractive surgery workup, ophthalmic genetics, payment methods, international data documentation, retinal images, global myopia pandemic, virtual pharmacy, and drug compliance and treatment. The authors have also provided valuable insights into various terminologies and definitions used in blockchain technology.

Intelligent Transportation Using Wireless Sensor Networks Blockchain and License Plate Recognition

License Plate Recognition (LPR) is essential for the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) since license plates are a necessary characteristic for distinguishing vehicles for traffic management. As the number of vehicles on the road continues to grow, managing and controlling traffic has become increasingly complex. Large cities in particular face significant challenges, including concerns around privacy and the consumption of resources. To address these issues, the development of automatic LPR technology within the IoV has emerged as a critical area of research. By detecting and recognizing license plates on roadways, LPR can significantly enhance management and control of the transportation system. However, implementing LPR within automated transportation systems requires careful consideration of privacy and trust issues, particularly in relation to the collection and use of sensitive data. This study recommends a blockchain-based approach for IoV privacy security that makes use of LPR. A system handles the registration of a user's license plate directly on the blockchain, avoiding the gateway. The database controller may crash as the number of vehicles in the system rises. This paper proposes a privacy protection system for the IoV using license plate recognition based on blockchain. When a license plate is captured by the LPR system, the captured image is sent to the gateway responsible for managing all communications. When the user requires the license plate, the registration is done by a system connected directly to the blockchain, without going through the gateway. Moreover, in the traditional IoV system, the central authority has full authority to manage the binding of vehicle identity and public key. As the number of vehicles increases in the system, it may cause the central server to crash. Key revocation is the process in which the blockchain system analyses the behaviour of vehicles to judge malicious users and revoke their public keys.

Production Planning Using a Shared Resource Register Organized According to the Assumptions of Blockchain Technology

This article presents the architecture of integration of blockchain technology (BCT) and the Internet of Things with the planning of production processes. The authors proposed a shared concept of a distributed machine database based on BCT. As part of the work, a network of connections for the exchange of production resources was created using nodes communicating in a decentralized system, which at the same time serves as an integration of the virtual and real environment. Particular attention was focused on developing an algorithm for the efficient division of production tasks between all interested network users. BCT is used to conclude smart contracts and transactions and ensure the security of exchanged production data within shared ledgers. The proposed concept is a solution enabling a modern approach to the interdisciplinary management of production resources while maintaining the highest cybersecurity standards.

Blockchain-Internet of Things Applications: Opportunities and Challenges for Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0

Today, blockchain is becoming more popular in academia and industry because it is a distributed, decentralised technology which is changing many industries in terms of security, building trust, etc. A few blockchain applications are banking, insurance, logistics, transportation, etc. Many insurance companies have been thinking about how blockchain could help them be more efficient. There is still a lot of hype about this immutable technology, even though it has not been utilised to its full potential. Insurers have to decide whether or not to use blockchain, just like many other businesses do. This technology keeps a distributed ledger on each blockchain node, making it more secure and transparent. The blockchain network can operate smart contracts and convince others to agree, so criminals cannot make mistakes. On another side, the Internet of Things (IoT) might make a real-time application work faster through its automation. With the integration of blockchain and IoT, there will always be a problem with technology regarding IoT devices and mining the blockchain. This paper gives a real-time view of blockchain-IoT-based applications for Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0. The last few sections discuss essential topics such as open issues, challenges, and research opportunities for future researchers to expand research in blockchain-IoT-based applications.

Leveraging Blockchain Technology for Ensuring Security and Privacy Aspects in Internet of Things: A Systematic Literature Review

As the Internet of Things (IoT) concept materialized worldwide in complex ecosystems, the related data security and privacy issues became apparent. While the system elements and their communication paths could be protected individually, generic, ecosystem-wide approaches were sought after as well. On a parallel timeline to IoT, the concept of distributed ledgers and blockchains came into the technological limelight. Blockchains offer many advantageous features in relation to enhanced security, anonymity, increased capacity, and peer-to-peer capabilities. Although blockchain technology can provide IoT with effective and efficient solutions, there are many challenges related to various aspects of integrating these technologies. While security, anonymity/data privacy, and smart contract-related features are apparently advantageous for blockchain technologies (BCT), there are challenges in relation to storage capacity/scalability, resource utilization, transaction rate scalability, predictability, and legal issues. This paper provides a systematic review on state-of-the-art approaches of BCT and IoT integration, specifically in order to solve certain security- and privacy-related issues. The paper first provides a brief overview of BCT and IoT's basic principles, including their architecture, protocols and consensus algorithms, characteristics, and the challenges of integrating them. Afterwards, it describes the survey methodology, including the search strategy, eligibility criteria, selection results, and characteristics of the included articles. Later, we highlight the findings of this study which illustrates different works that addressed the integration of blockchain technology and IoT to tackle various aspects of privacy and security, which are followed by a categorization of applications that have been investigated with different characteristics, such as their primary information, objective, development level, target application, type of blockchain and platform, consensus algorithm, evaluation environment and metrics, future works or open issues (if any), and further notes for consideration. Furthermore, a detailed discussion of all articles is included from an architectural and operational perspective. Finally, we cover major gaps and future considerations that can be taken into account when integrating blockchain technology with IoT.

Enabling Value Co-Creation in Healthcare through Blockchain Technology

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to manage complex relations within the healthcare ecosystem. The role of new technologies in achieving this goal is a topic of current interest. Among them, blockchain technology is experiencing widespread application in the healthcare context. The present work investigates how this technology fosters value co-creation paths in the new digital healthcare ecosystems. To this end, a multiple case study has been conducted examining the development and application of blockchain by 32 healthcare tech companies. The results show blockchain technology adoption's current and potential impacts on value co-creation regarding data and resource sharing, patient participation, and collaboration between professionals. Three main areas of activity emerge from the case studies where blockchain implementation brings significant benefits for value co-creation: improving service interaction, impacting actors' engagement, and fostering ecosystem transparency.

A Blockchain Technology Introduction Strategy for Asymmetric Sharing Platforms under Different Homing Behaviors of Both Sides

To address user privacy concerns and improve user trust levels, sharing platforms are commencing to focus on investing in blockchain technology. This study focuses on blockchain technology investment and pricing strategies for two asymmetric sharing platforms. By constructing a Hotelling model, we investigate the investment strategies of the two asymmetric platforms regarding blockchain technology under different user attribution behaviours, i.e., single-homing or multi-homing, and the optimal pricing under different investment decisions. Afterwards, we compare and analyse the investment strategies under different conditions, obtain the influence of relevant market factors on the pricing strategies of the platforms, and finally determine the optimal timing of blockchain technology investment for asymmetric sharing platforms. The results indicate that when users' perception of blockchain value is high, both platforms are motivated to introduce blockchain technology, and, conversely, a stronger platform exits the blockchain market. In multi-homing markets, platforms are more likely to implement blockchain strategies and the cost of technology investment is significantly higher than in a single-homing market. In addition, we also find that the degree of differentiation has a significant impact on the blockchain strategies of weaker platform under multi-homing market.

Blockchain-Based Secure Authentication with Improved Performance for Fog Computing

Advancement in the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing has escalated the number of connected edge devices in a smart city environment. Having billions more devices has contributed to security concerns, and an attack-proof authentication mechanism is the need of the hour to sustain the IoT environment. Securing all devices could be a huge task and require lots of computational power, and can be a bottleneck for devices with fewer computational resources. To improve the authentication mechanism, many researchers have proposed decentralized applications such as blockchain technology for securing fog and IoT environments. Ethereum is considered a popular blockchain platform and is used by researchers to implement the authentication mechanism due to its programable smart contract. In this research, we proposed a secure authentication mechanism with improved performance. Neo blockchain is a platform that has properties that can provide improved security and faster execution. The research utilizes the intrinsic properties of Neo blockchain to develop a secure authentication mechanism. The proposed authentication mechanism is compared with the existing algorithms and shows that the proposed mechanism is 20 to 90 per cent faster in execution time and has over 30 to 70 per cent decrease in registration and authentication when compared to existing methods.

A Framework for Online Document Verification Using Self-Sovereign Identity Technology

As the world is gradually moving towards digitization, forgery of vital digital documents has become relatively easy. Therefore, the need for efficient and secure verification and authentication practices of digital documents is also increasing. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is a set of technologies that build on core concepts in identity management, blockchain technology, and cryptography. SSI enables entities to create fraud-proof verifiable credentials and instantly verify the authenticity of a digital credential. The online document verification solutions must deal with a myriad of issues in regard to privacy and security. Moreover, various challenging and tedious processes have made document verification overly complex and time-consuming which motivated us to conduct this research. This work presents a novel framework for online document verification based on SSI technology. The solution address the complexity and interoperability issues that are present in the current digital document verification systems. We look at a particular use case, i.e., document verification in online loan processing and evaluate how this proposed approach can make an impact on the existing system. Our solution based on SSI standards replaces the intermediary and enables trust between players in the ecosystem. The technology also holds the potential to make the system more efficient, interoperable, and privacy-preserving.

Physical fitness data monitoring of college students based on the internet of things and blockchain

Contemporary college students are the pillars of the country and bear the responsibility of building a great country. College students should not only have smart brains, but also have strong bodies. The state has always attached great importance to the physical condition of college students and has promulgated a series of relevant policies and regulations to ensure the effective development of college students' physical health work. This paper aims to monitor and research college students' physical fitness data based on the Internet of Things and blockchain technology. This paper first introduces the data collection based on the Internet of Things, the Internet of Things data collection system has good versatility, ease of use, and quite rich functions, which can realize the collection and reliable transmission of different environmental data. Then focuses on the data collection and confidentiality technology based on blockchain. Each user in the blockchain system has a pair of public and private keys, and elliptic curve algorithms are usually used to generate public key cryptography. Finally, based on the Internet of Things and blockchain technology, the physical fitness data of college students is analyzed and researched. The experimental results of this paper show that, according to the data collection technology of the Internet of Things and blockchain, the analysis of variance is carried out on the data of male pull-ups and female sit-ups of 2019 students. The analysis of variance F of boys' pull-ups is 76.222, and the significance is about 0, that is, P < 0.01. The difference is very obvious, which proves that there is a significant difference in boys' pull-ups in the past 3 years. The analysis of variance F for girls' sit-ups is 89.187, and the significance is about 0. Similarly, it shows that there are significant differences in girls' sit-ups in the past 3 years. Therefore, the existing teaching mode is stabilized and physical exercise is enhanced. Meanwhile, to enhance the physical fitness of students, it is necessary to strengthen the strength of physical education teachers and increase the introduction of sports talents and business training.

Barriers to blockchain adoption for supply chain finance: the case of Indian SMEs

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India are suffering from the long-standing challenges related to asymmetric information, high transaction costs, SMEs’ opacity and limited access to credit. Blockchain technology, which is still in its infancy in terms of adoption in India, can facilitate SMEs to counter these challenges. Fuelled by this motivation, the study aims to investigate the significant barriers to blockchain adoption in supply chain finance practices by Indian SMEs. Using fuzzy-analytic hierarchy process, sensitivity analysis, and fuzzy-decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory this paper identifies the blockchain barriers, prioritises them and examine their cause and effect relationships. The results of the study indicate that technology barriers are the most influential barriers that impede blockchain adoption. The findings will help the policymakers and practitioners to take suitable measures to overcome these barriers and fuel the adoption of blockchain in Indian SMEs.

Securing Fog Computing with a Decentralised User Authentication Approach Based on Blockchain

The use of low-cost sensors in IoT over high-cost devices has been considered less expensive. However, these low-cost sensors have their own limitations such as the accuracy, quality, and reliability of the data collected. Fog computing offers solutions to those limitations; nevertheless, owning to its intrinsic distributed architecture, it faces challenges in the form of security of fog devices, secure authentication and privacy. Blockchain technology has been utilised to offer solutions for the authentication and security challenges in fog systems. This paper proposes an authentication system that utilises the characteristics and advantages of blockchain and smart contracts to authenticate users securely. The implemented system uses the email address, username, Ethereum address, password and data from a biometric reader to register and authenticate users. Experiments showed that the proposed method is secure and achieved performance improvement when compared to existing methods. The comparison of results with state-of-the-art showed that the proposed authentication system consumed up to 30% fewer resources in transaction and execution cost; however, there was an increase of up to 30% in miner fees.

Technical Design and Development of A Self-Sovereign Identity Management Platform for Patient-Centric Health Care Using Blockchain Technology

Objective

Clinical data in the United States are highly fragmented, stored in numerous different databases, and are defined by service providers or clinical specialties rather than by individuals or their families. As a result, linking or aggregating a complete record for a patient is a major technological, legal, and operational challenge. One of the factors that has made clinical data integration so difficult to achieve is the lack of a universal ID for everyone. This leads to other related problems of having to prove identity at each interaction with the health system and repeatedly providing basic information on demographics, insurance, payment, and medical conditions. Traditional solutions that require complex governance, expensive technology, and risks to privacy and security of the data have failed adequately to solve this interoperability problem. We describe the technical design decisions of a patient-centric decentralized health identity management system using the blockchain technology, called MediLinker, to address some of these challenges.

Design

Our multidisciplinary research group developed and implemented an identity wallet, which uses the blockchain technology to manage verifiable credentials issued by healthcare clinics, banks, and insurance companies. To manage patient's self-sovereign identity, we leveraged the Hyperledger Indy blockchain framework to store patient's decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and the schemas or format for each credential type. In contrast, the credentials containing patient data are stored 'off-ledger' in each person's wallet and accessible via a computer or smartphone. We used Hyperledger Aries as a middleware layer (API: Application Programming Interface) to connect Hyperledger Indy with the front-end, which was developed using a JavaScript framework, ReactJS (Web Application) and React Native (iOS Application).

Results

MediLinker allows users to store their personal data on digital wallets, which they control. It uses a decentralized trusted identity using Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Aries. Patients use MediLinker to register and share their information securely and in a trusted system with healthcare and other service providers. Each MediLinker wallet can have six credential types: health ID with patient demographics, insurance, medication list including COVID-19 vaccination status, credit card, medical power of attorney (MPOA) for guardians of pediatric or geriatric patients, and research consent. The system allows for in-person and remote granting and revoking of such permissions for care, research, or other purposes without repeatedly requiring physical identity documents or enrollment information.

Conclusion

We successfully developed and tested a blockchain-based technical architecture, described in this article, as an identity management system that may be operationalized and scaled for future implementation to improve patient experience and control over their personal information.

Application of Blockchain Technology in Production Scheduling and Management of Human Resources Competencies

Today, enterprises are multitasking, with branches set up all over the world. Virtual enterprises are created to make better use of existing resources, improve the quality of manufactured products and agilely respond to customer requirements. In order to fully meet the requirements of enterprises, a decentralized structure of data registration and transmission and authentication of network users is needed. The information collected via the Internet of Things and flowing based on the properties of the Blockchain (BC) network facilitates enterprise resource planning and enables the integration of internal processes, especially when planning, changing the current or introducing new production. The aim of this paper is to present the concept of using a common data register in BC technology, which enables a number of applications related to the automation of the process of selecting human resources for production tasks. The paper presents an analysis of the problem related to the integration of production scheduling and human resource management with blockchain technology. Also presented is a literature analysis on scheduling, blockchain technology and data storage in the blockchain network. The analysis presents how the blockchain network works and how exactly it fits into production engineering with its advantages and disadvantages. An employee evaluation method based on the resource work history and determination of its current value within individual competencies is presented. The integration of production scheduling and human resource management with the use of BC technology is simulated. The most important advantage is faster and more effective planning thanks to the elimination of all intermediary channels in the flow of production transactions. Production tasks are balanced with production capacity in entities belonging to the virtual enterprise in parallel. For future research, different online planning algorithms will be developed and compared to achieve consortium members’ consensus on production and human resources planning.

Applicability of Blockchain-Based Implementation for Risk Management in Healthcare Projects

Hospitals provide diverse tasks essential for the delivery of patient care and are comprised of many functional units. This makes healthcare projects in construction highly complex among other types of building projects due to the specific regulations, multiple functions it must provide, complicated mechanical and electrical systems, and so on. This complexity embodies potential risk events during its construction, which not only influences the completion of the project but can impact the patients' safety and health conditions even after the project is finished. To prevent such outcomes, risk management is a crucial process that can identify, evaluate, and properly mitigate risks along the project lifecycle. A key aspect of risk management is that it requires the interaction and contribution from multiple stakeholders of the project. Various frameworks and tools that enable collaborative management of risks among multiple stakeholders have been developed in the past. However, the developed frameworks are not suitable in the sense that it does not protect the confidentiality of individual inputs from the stakeholders. Moreover, these frameworks are centralized systems, which can bring issues related to the security and transparency of the information that is being stored. Blockchain technology is an emergent distributed ledger technology (DLT) that can provide solutions to the listed problems found in centralized systems. It is a novel system that records information on a decentralized, distributed ledger, where transactions are constantly duplicated and updated. This study explores the applicability of blockchain technology for healthcare risk management. The key functional elements of blockchain that can resolve the challenges faced by prior risk management frameworks have been identified and discussed. Based on the discussions, a conceptual information management model for managing healthcare project risks on a blockchain has been conceived. The development of the initial prototype has been explained. The research study illustrates the process, benefits, and limitations of adopting the blockchain technology for collaborative risk management in healthcare projects.

Improving Transitions of Care: Designing a Blockchain Application for Patient Identity Management

Background

The current healthcare ecosystem in the United States is plagued by inefficiencies in transitions of patient care between healthcare providers due in large part to a lack of interoperability among the many electronic medical record (EMR) systems that exist today. Both providers and patients experience significant frustration due to the negative effects of increased costs, unnecessary administrative burden, and duplication of services that occur because of data fragmentation in the system. Blockchain technology provides a potential solution to mitigate or eliminate these gaps by allowing for exchange of healthcare information that is distributed, auditable, immutable, and respectful of patient autonomy. Our multidisciplinary team identified key tasks required for a transition of care to design and develop a blockchain application, MediLinker, which served as a patient-centric identity management system to address issues of data fragmentation ultimately aiding in the delivery of high-value care services.

Methods

The MediLinker application was evaluated for its ability to accomplish various key tasks needed for a successful transition of patient care in an outpatient setting. Our team created 20 unique patient use cases covering a diversity of medical needs and social circumstances that were played out by participants who were asked to perform various tasks as they received case across a simulated healthcare ecosystem composed of four clinics, a research institution, and other ancillary public services. Tasks included, but were not limited to, clinic enrollment, verification of identity, medication reconciliation, sharing insurance and billing information, and updating demographic information. With this iteration of MediLinker, we specifically focused on the functionality of digital guardianship and patient revocation of healthcare information. In addition, throughout the simulation, we surveyed participant perceptions regarding the use of MediLinker and blockchain technology to better ascertain comfortability and usability of the application.

Results

Quantitative evaluation of simulation results revealed that MediLinker was able to successfully accomplish all seven clinical scenarios tested across the 20 patient use cases. MediLinker successfully achieved its goal of patient-centered interoperability as participants transitioned their simulated healthcare data, including COVID-19 vaccination status and current medications, across the four clinic sites and research institution. In addition to completing all key tasks designated, all eligible participants were able to enroll with and subsequently revoke data access with our simulated research site. MediLinker had a low data-entry error rate, with most errors occurring due to work-flow vulnerabilities. Our qualitative analysis of user perceptions indicated that comfortability and trust with blockchain technology, such as MediLinker, grew with increased education and exposure to such technology.

Conclusions

The ubiquitous problem of data fragmentation in our current healthcare ecosystem has placed considerable strain on providers and patients alike. Blockchain applications for health identity management, such as MediLinker, provide a viable solution to stem the inefficiencies that exist today. The interoperability that MediLinker provided across our simulated healthcare system has the potential to improve transitions of care by sharing key aspects of healthcare information in a timely, secure, and patent-centric fashion allowing for the delivery of consistent and personalized high value care. Blockchain technologies appear to face similar challenges to widespread adoption as other novel interventions, namely recognition, trust, and usability. Further development and scaling are required for such technology to realize its full potential in the real world and transform the practice of modern health care.

Applications of Blockchain Technology to Higher Education Arena: A Bibliometric Analysis

Research related to blockchain is rapidly gaining importance in the higher education. This opportunity collaborates with a proposal for a review of papers on the main blockchain topic. The bibliometric analysis included 61 peer-reviewed articles published in the Scopus database during the period of 2016 to 2021. This paper offers the identification of gaps in the literature enabling studies on the subject in higher education. The article identifies the main applications of blockchain technology in higher education around the world, as well as suggests future investigations. For further scientific investigation, we propose the operationalization of each of the researched approaches, especially combining the blockchain relationship, artificial intelligence, digital innovation, digital maturity, and customer experience in higher education.

Blockchain Technology for Trustworthy Operations in the Management of Strategic Grain Reserves

Food is a daily requirement for everyone, while production patterns are seasonal. Producing sufficient nutrients is becoming more difficult because water and soil resources are already stressed and are becoming increasingly strained by climate change. Improving food security requires expertise in various areas, including sophisticated climate models, genetics research, market and household behaviour modelling, political shock modelling, and comprehensive environmental research. Additionally, governments stockpile grains to enhance national food security. These reserves should engage in markets only according to clear and transparent regulations and within defined price ranges to facilitate market functioning. It increases the demand for better technology in public administration to boost the management and distribution capacity while concentrating on improved controls and transparent governance systems. Blockchain technology emerges as a promising technology to enhance visibility, transparency, and data integrity with an immutable distributed ledger to increase trust in the parties’ business transactions. This paper discusses blockchain technology and its potential role in strategic grain reserve management.

Blockchain for Electronic Voting System-Review and Open Research Challenges

Online voting is a trend that is gaining momentum in modern society. It has great potential to decrease organizational costs and increase voter turnout. It eliminates the need to print ballot papers or open polling stations—voters can vote from wherever there is an Internet connection. Despite these benefits, online voting solutions are viewed with a great deal of caution because they introduce new threats. A single vulnerability can lead to large-scale manipulations of votes. Electronic voting systems must be legitimate, accurate, safe, and convenient when used for elections. Nonetheless, adoption may be limited by potential problems associated with electronic voting systems. Blockchain technology came into the ground to overcome these issues and offers decentralized nodes for electronic voting and is used to produce electronic voting systems mainly because of their end-to-end verification advantages. This technology is a beautiful replacement for traditional electronic voting solutions with distributed, non-repudiation, and security protection characteristics. The following article gives an overview of electronic voting systems based on blockchain technology. The main goal of this analysis was to examine the current status of blockchain-based voting research and online voting systems and any related difficulties to predict future developments. This study provides a conceptual description of the intended blockchain-based electronic voting application and an introduction to the fundamental structure and characteristics of the blockchain in connection to electronic voting. As a consequence of this study, it was discovered that blockchain systems may help solve some of the issues that now plague election systems. On the other hand, the most often mentioned issues in blockchain applications are privacy protection and transaction speed. For a sustainable blockchain-based electronic voting system, the security of remote participation must be viable, and for scalability, transaction speed must be addressed. Due to these concerns, it was determined that the existing frameworks need to be improved to be utilized in voting systems.

Secure Combination of IoT and Blockchain by Physically Binding IoT Devices to Smart Non-Fungible Tokens Using PUFs

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are widely used in blockchain to represent unique and non-interchangeable assets. Current NFTs allow representing assets by a unique identifier, as a possession of an owner. The novelty introduced in this paper is the proposal of smart NFTs to represent IoT devices, which are physical smart assets. Hence, they are also identified as the utility of a user, they have a blockchain account (BCA) address to participate actively in the blockchain transactions, they can establish secure communication channels with owners and users, and they operate dynamically with several modes associated with their token states. A smart NFT is physically bound to its IoT device thanks to the use of a physical unclonable function (PUF) that allows recovering its private key and, then, its BCA address. The link between tokens and devices is difficult to break and can be traced during their lifetime, because devices execute a secure boot and carry out mutual authentication processes with new owners and users that could add new software. Hence, devices prove their trusted hardware and software. A whole demonstration of the proposal developed with ESP32-based IoT devices and Ethereum blockchain is presented, using the SRAM of the ESP32 microcontroller as the PUF.

Privacy-Preserving IoT Data Aggregation Based on Blockchain and Homomorphic Encryption

Data analytics based on the produced data from the Internet of Things (IoT) devices is expected to improve the individuals’ quality of life. However, ensuring security and privacy in the IoT data aggregation process is a non-trivial task. Generally, the IoT data aggregation process is based on centralized servers. Yet, in the case of distributed approaches, it is difficult to coordinate several untrustworthy parties. Fortunately, the blockchain may provide decentralization while overcoming the trust problem. Consequently, blockchain-based IoT data aggregation may become a reasonable choice for the design of a privacy-preserving system. To this end, we propose PrivDA, a Privacy-preserving IoT Data Aggregation scheme based on the blockchain and homomorphic encryption technologies. In the proposed system, each data consumer can create a smart contract and publish both terms of service and requested IoT data. Thus, the smart contract puts together into one group potential data producers that can answer the consumer’s request and chooses one aggregator, the role of which is to compute the group requested result using homomorphic computations. Therefore, group-level aggregation obfuscates IoT data, which complicates sensitive information inference from a single IoT device. Finally, we deploy the proposal on a private Ethereum blockchain and give the performance evaluation.

On the benefits and challenges of blockchains for managing food supply chains

The expansion of the food industry, within and beyond national borders, has resulted in complex collaborative networks and supply chains. The management culture adopted for food supply chains has an impact on the quality of the end product and the vitality of the businesses involved. In this report, we focus on the use of blockchain technology, and distributed ledgers in general, for managing supply chains in the food and agricultural sectors. We explore the challenges with which typical management systems are faced, such as food safety, food fraud, and inefficient processes, as well as ethical aspects like fair trade, animal welfare, and the environmental impact of food production. The use of blockchain-based systems for managing a supply chain offers significant benefits, such as faster and more reliable traceability. Our analysis, involving small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from Denmark, highlights that SMEs could benefit from blockchain-based systems that encourage fair trade and authenticity documentation, expose good practices, and decrease management costs. However, due to a lack of important policies and standards, and due to the limited understanding of the technology itself, its large-scale adoption is at the moment immature. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.

Integration of Blockchain, IoT and Machine Learning for Multistage Quality Control and Enhancing Security in Smart Manufacturing

Smart manufacturing systems are growing based on the various requests for predicting the reliability and quality of equipment. Many machine learning techniques are being examined to that end. Another issue which considers an important part of industry is data security and management. To overcome the problems mentioned above, we applied the integrated methods of blockchain and machine learning to secure system transactions and handle a dataset to overcome the fake dataset. To manage and analyze the collected dataset, big data techniques were used. The blockchain system was implemented in the private Hyperledger Fabric platform. Similarly, the fault diagnosis prediction aspect was evaluated based on the hybrid prediction technique. The system’s quality control was evaluated based on non-linear machine learning techniques, which modeled that complex environment and found the true positive rate of the system’s quality control approach.

Blockchain-Based Digital Contact Tracing Apps for COVID-19 Pandemic Management: Issues, Challenges, Solutions, and Future Directions

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial global disturbance by affecting more than 42 million people (as of the end of October 2020). Since there is no medication or vaccine available, the only way to combat it is to minimize transmission. Digital contact tracing is an effective technique that can be utilized for this purpose, as it eliminates the manual contact tracing process and could help in identifying and isolating affected people. However, users are reluctant to share their location and contact details due to concerns related to the privacy and security of their personal information, which affects its implementation and extensive adoption. Blockchain technology has been applied in various domains and has been proven to be an effective approach for handling data transactions securely, which makes it an ideal choice for digital contact tracing apps. The properties of blockchain such as time stamping and immutability of data may facilitate the retrieval of accurate information on the trail of the virus in a transparent manner, while data encryption assures the integrity of the information being provided. Furthermore, the anonymity of the user's identity alleviates some of the risks related to privacy and confidentiality concerns. In this paper, we provide readers with a detailed discussion on the digital contact tracing mechanism and outline the apps developed so far to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, we present the possible risks, issues, and challenges associated with the available contact tracing apps and analyze how the adoption of a blockchain-based decentralized network for handling the app could provide users with privacy-preserving contact tracing without compromising performance and efficiency.

[Research on Application of Intelligent Tracing System for IVD Reagents Based on Blockchain Technology]

In recent years, the IVD industry has developed rapidly based on the increasing market demand, and plays an important role in disease prevention, clinical diagnosis, health monitoring and guiding treatment. Therefore, followed quality and safety issues are highly concerned. The unique advantages of blockchain technology, decentralization, distrust and non-tampering, can write into trusted node data in every link covering production, circulation and usage of IVD reagents, and establish a distributed ledger with full backup, which makes the anti-conterfeiting and traceability for IVD reagents possible. We discuss whole process intelligent tracing system for IVD reagents based on blockchain technology. Through the strong mechanism of pre-supervision and post-punishment, the source of reagents can be traced, quality and responsibility can be investigated, and the medical inspection quality and diagnostic safety can be guarded.

Next-Generation Digital Ecosystem for Climate Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery: A Review of Digital Data Collection Technologies

Climate change has been called "the defining challenge of our age" and yet the global community lacks adequate information to understand whether actions to address it are succeeding or failing to mitigate it. The emergence of technologies such as earth observation (EO) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) promises to provide new advances in data collection for monitoring climate change mitigation, particularly where traditional means of data exploration and analysis, such as government-led statistical census efforts, are costly and time consuming. In this review article, we examine the extent to which digital data technologies, such as EO (e.g., remote sensing satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs, generally from space) and IoT (e.g., smart meters, sensors, and actuators, generally from the ground) can address existing gaps that impede efforts to evaluate progress toward global climate change mitigation. We argue that there is underexplored potential for EO and IoT to advance large-scale data generation that can be translated to improve climate change data collection. Finally, we discuss how a system employing digital data collection technologies could leverage advances in distributed ledger technologies to address concerns of transparency, privacy, and data governance.

Enhancing Privacy and Data Security across Healthcare Applications Using Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Concepts

Nowadays, blockchain is developing as a secure and trustworthy platform for secure information sharing in areas of application like banking, supply chain management, food industry, energy, the Internet, and medical services. Besides, the blockchain can be described in a decentralized manner as an immutable ledger for recording data entries. Furthermore, this new technology has been developed to interrupt a variety of data-driven fields, including the health sector. However, blockchain refers to the distributed ledger technology, which constitutes an innovation in the information recording and sharing without a trusted third party. In this paper, blockchain and Distributed Ledger-based Improved Biomedical Security system (BDL-IBS) has been proposed to enhance the privacy and data security across healthcare applications. Further, our goal is to make it possible for patients to use the data to support their care and to provide strong consent systems for sharing data among different organizations and applications, since this includes managing and accessing a high amount of medical information, and this technology can maintain data to ensure reliability. Finally, results show that new blockchain-based digital platforms allow for fast, easy, and seamless interactions between data suppliers to enhance privacy and data security, including for patients themselves.

Blockchain Technology Secures Robot Swarms: A Comparison of Consensus Protocols and Their Resilience to Byzantine Robots

Consensus achievement is a crucial capability for robot swarms, for example, for path selection, spatial aggregation, or collective sensing. However, the presence of malfunctioning and malicious robots (Byzantine robots) can make it impossible to achieve consensus using classical consensus protocols. In this work, we show how a swarm of robots can achieve consensus even in the presence of Byzantine robots by exploiting blockchain technology. Bitcoin and later blockchain frameworks, such as Ethereum, have revolutionized financial transactions. These frameworks are based on decentralized databases (blockchains) that can achieve secure consensus in peer-to-peer networks. We illustrate our approach in a collective sensing scenario where robots in a swarm are controlled via blockchain-based smart contracts (decentralized protocols executed via blockchain technology) that serve as “meta-controllers” and we compare it to state-of-the-art consensus protocols using a robot swarm simulator. Additionally, we show that our blockchain-based approach can prevent attacks where robots forge a large number of identities (Sybil attacks). The developed robot-blockchain interface is released as open-source software in order to facilitate future research in blockchain-controlled robot swarms. Besides increasing security, we expect the presented approach to be important for data analysis, digital forensics, and robot-to-robot financial transactions in robot swarms.

Strengthening public health surveillance through blockchain technology

Blockchain technology is a decentralized system of recording data and performing transactions which is increasingly being used across many industries, including healthcare. It has several unique features like the validation of transaction processes, prevention of systems failure from any single point of transaction, and approval of data sharing with optimal security, to name a few. At the hospital level, blockchain technologies are used in the electronic medical records systems, insurance claims, billing management, and so on. Moreover, this technology is helpful to manage logistic and human resources to achieve the quality of care in learning health systems. In many countries, blockchain is being used to promote patient-centered care by sharing patient data for remote monitoring and management. Furthermore, blockchain technology has the potential to strengthen disease surveillance systems in cases of disease outbreaks resulting in local and global health emergencies. In such conditions, blockchain can be used to identify health security concerns, analyze preventive measures, and facilitate decision-making processes to act rapidly and effectively. Despite its limitations, research, and practice based on blockchain technology have shown promises to strengthen health systems around the world with a potential to reduce the global burden of diseases, mortality, morbidity, and economic costs.

Moving Towards a Blockchain-Based Healthcare Information System

One of the major problems that a national health system face is the lack of a unified clinical data management. In Greece, the critical and sensitive medical data generated during a patient lifetime are fragmented in one or more hospitals and healthcare services are not characterized by a 'continuity' factor. There is not the appropriate technological and administrative infrastructure for a unified patient medical history, prescriptions, laboratory tests or therapeutic plan. Technological, administrative and economic factors have led to this situation. We propose the integration and implementation of a blockchain network as a complementary technology to the existing information systems, so reliable and effective information management could be provided by a healthcare organization or the national healthcare system. Blockchain technology could be implemented as a bridge that can provide information systems interoperability within a hospital or between different hospitals.

Blockchains, Formulary Evaluations and Health Technology Assessment

Blockchains have the potential, if appropriately implemented and managed, of contributing to a fundamental change in the application of techniques of health technology assessment in formulary decision making. Rather than continuing to rely on claims made by manufacturers that are non-evaluable, the introduction of blockchains as adjunct to the electronic medical record, meet an unmet medical need in enabling a platform for the real time assessment of claims. Rather than focusing the case for their product on lifetime cost-per-QALY models, which have no chance of ever being validated, the blockchain platform offers a low cost opportunity for claims evaluation. Manufacturers would be required to abandon the construction of imaginary cost-per-QALY worlds to support claims for pricing and formulary trier position, in favor of claims that can be evaluated and reported back to formulary committees in a short yet meaningful time horizon. Manufacturers would present a claims assessment protocol as part of the formulary submission package. If agreed with the formulary committee, the protocol would be implemented and managed through the patient blockchain membership. Claims would be monitored and evaluated in real time with a final report to the formulary committee in a matter of months. Lifetime imaginary claims for cost-per-QALY, set alongside willingness-to-pay thresholds, would be a thing of the past. Pricing decisions and formulary placement would reflect a robust evidence base and not just extrapolations from pivotal clinical trials.

Blockchains, Property Rights and Health Technology Assessment in the Pharmaceutical and Device (s) Industries

Ongoing concerns with the security of health information, both from the perspective of the individual patient as well as health systems has led to increased attention being given to the potential role of blockchain technology in the secure storage of health information through encryption, the integration of diverse health record systems and the vesting of property and access rights to health data in the patient. While the security offered by blockchain technology has long been recognized in the finance sector with the emergence of a range of cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange and store of value, demonstrating the value of blockchain technology in health management and health technology assessment has yet to be achieved. In this commentary, a number of questions are raised as to the potential value offered by blockchain technology as a complement to existing electronic medical record systems. Chief among these are: (i) the allocation of property rights as a necessary precondition for blockchain uptake; (ii) access and incentives for active as opposed to passive blockchain membership; (iii) monetization of blockchain access; (iv) capturing data from within the blockchain and the possibility of value added data; (v) the potential for blockchain platforms in formulary evaluations; (vi) the blockchain as a managed market for health data; and (vii) the role of intermediation in blockchain management.

Digital trade coin: towards a more stable digital currency

We study the evolution of ideas related to creation of asset-backed currencies over the last 200 years and argue that recent developments related to distributed ledger technologies and blockchains give asset-backed currencies a new lease of life. We propose a practical mechanism combining novel technological breakthroughs with well-established hedging techniques for building an asset-backed transactional oriented cryptocurrency, which we call the digital trade coin (DTC). We show that in its mature state, the DTC can serve as a much-needed counterpoint to fiat reserve currencies of today.

Blockchain Based Decentralized Management of Demand Response Programs in Smart Energy Grids

In this paper, we investigate the use of decentralized blockchain mechanisms for delivering transparent, secure, reliable, and timely energy flexibility, under the form of adaptation of energy demand profiles of Distributed Energy Prosumers, to all the stakeholders involved in the flexibility markets (Distribution System Operators primarily, retailers, aggregators, etc.). In our approach, a blockchain based distributed ledger stores in a tamper proof manner the energy prosumption information collected from Internet of Things smart metering devices, while self-enforcing smart contracts programmatically define the expected energy flexibility at the level of each prosumer, the associated rewards or penalties, and the rules for balancing the energy demand with the energy production at grid level. Consensus based validation will be used for demand response programs validation and to activate the appropriate financial settlement for the flexibility providers. The approach was validated using a prototype implemented in an Ethereum platform using energy consumption and production traces of several buildings from literature data sets. The results show that our blockchain based distributed demand side management can be used for matching energy demand and production at smart grid level, the demand response signal being followed with high accuracy, while the amount of energy flexibility needed for convergence is reduced.