Enhancing healthcare security: Time-based authentication for privacy-preserving IoMT sensor monitoring framework leveraging blockchain technology

Abstract

The rapid progression of the Internet of Things and its increasing use in healthcare has generated considerable concerns over the safeguarding and privacy of vital medical data. In response to these issues, blockchain has surfaced as a possible remedy, offering transparent, immutable, and decentralized storage. Nevertheless, conventional blockchain-based systems still encounter constraints in maintaining anonymity, confidentiality, and privacy. Hence, this article suggests a framework based on a secure consortium blockchain that prioritizes data privacy and employs time-based authentication to streamline patient data monitoring. First, we employ time-based authentication to verify the identities of authorized users. This process utilizes the NIK-512 hashing algorithm in conjunction with passwords and registered timestamps, which strengthens the confidentiality of data. Patient information undergoes encryption before transmission within the network. Further, our framework introduces a sensor registration service that the trusted node employs to assign a distinct identity to each sensor connected to a patient. The implementation of data processing and filtering techniques at the edge layer serves the purpose of mitigating disturbances that may occur during the collection of sensor-based data. Finally, a comprehensive evaluation of performance and security has been carried out with various metrics. The findings indicate that the proposed solution effectively enhances the management of Internet of Medical Things data by providing improved privacy and security.