Writer: Filippos Pelekoudas-Oikonomou

The Integral Vitality Monitoring use case of the NextPerception project (UC1) aims to eliminate distance and time to provide the citizens with timely and ubiquitous health supervisory service. The advances on technology, however, can provoke serious concerns in terms of privacy and security. The heterogeneous nature of the radio access technologies and the device types that are present in an IoT-based health monitoring system have a potential to expose the patient’s medical data, that need to remain confidential and visible only to authorised stakeholders.

To preserve patients’ security and privacy and protect their sensitive data, in NextPerception, we have devoted our effort to develop efficient mechanisms based on blockchain technology for securing IoT-based health monitoring systems in a lightweight manner, based on the Hyperledger Fabric platform that consists of two Blockchain networks (local and global) to provide accountability in the system and eliminate the Single Point of Failure, a common issue in centralized security systems (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9617803).

The Blockchain-based architecture in the context of UC1

We, EVOTEL (http://www.evotel-info.com/), are currently developing a decentralized blockchain-based authentication mechanism for IoT devices. The proposed blockchain-based architecture handles transactions in terms of Device registration and Data transferring. We expect that these solutions will play a significant role in: 1) securing the devices themselves, which are key elements of a smart health monitoring system; and 2) resisting against unauthorised access during data transmission (i.e., ensuring tamper proof transmission of medical data). For more information on this topic, please contact Filippos Pelekoudas-Oikonomou (filippos@evotel-info.com) or visit our website.