Private Blockchain-Based Wireless Body Area Network Platform for Wearable Internet of Thing Devices in Healthcare
Marc Jayson Baucas, Petros Spachos, Stefano Gregori · 2023
In recent years, healthcare systems have included the Internet of Things (IoT) technology in their services, such as in remote patient monitoring systems. Wearable IoT devices can provide information regarding the patient's health that are accurate and time-sensitive. However, vulnerabilities are evident as more IoT devices connect to the network. For healthcare services, the security of patient data is an issue. At the same time, with real-time data transmissions, the network runs into manageability concerns. In this work, we propose a private blockchain-based Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) platform to aid wearable IoT devices in healthcare services. We chose this blockchain technology due to its strengths in security. Then, we enable a distributive architecture using WBANs to introduce a decentralized configuration that can ensure privacy among wearable IoT devices within the network. To evaluate the feasibility of the proposed platform in terms of latency and throughput, we conducted experiments with several wearable IoT devices. The results show that integrating a WBAN to create a fog server improves the network performance with an increasing number of IoT devices and packet size. Also, the blockchain showed its ability to address security threats in healthcare services. We evaluate our proposed platform through a performance test and a STRIDE threat model, and we prove its feasibility in improving the security and manageability of wearable IoT devices in healthcare.