Health-BlockEdge: Blockchain-Edge Framework for Reliable Low-Latency Digital Healthcare Applications

Ejaz, Muneeb; Kumar, Tanesh; Kovacevic, Ivana; Ylianttila, Mika; Harjula, Erkki

doi:10.3390/s21072502

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Health-BlockEdge: Blockchain-Edge Framework for Reliable Low-Latency Digital Healthcare Applications

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Erkki Koiso-Kanttilan Katu 3, University of Oulu, Linnanmaa, 90570 Oulu, Finland

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Academic Editor: Claudio Savaglio

Sensors 2021, 21(7), 2502; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072502

Received: 1 March 2021 / Revised: 26 March 2021 / Accepted: 27 March 2021 / Published: 3 April 2021

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors and Smart Devices at the Edge: IoT Meets Edge Computing)

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Abstract

The rapid evolution of technology allows the healthcare sector to adopt intelligent, context-aware, secure, and ubiquitous healthcare services. Together with the global trend of an aging population, it has become highly important to propose value-creating, yet cost-efficient digital solutions for healthcare systems. These solutions should provide effective means of healthcare services in both the hospital and home care scenarios. In this paper, we focused on the latter case, where the goal was to provide easy-to-use, reliable, and secure remote monitoring and aid for elderly persons at their home. We proposed a framework to integrate the capabilities of edge computing and blockchain technology to address some of the key requirements of smart remote healthcare systems, such as long operating times, low cost, resilience to network problems, security, and trust in highly dynamic network conditions. In order to assess the feasibility of our approach, we evaluated the performance of our framework in terms of latency, power consumption, network utilization, and computational load, compared to a scenario where no blockchain was used. View Full-Text

Keywords: IoT; healthcare; remote monitoring; edge computing; blockchain; fog computing; mist computing; energy efficiency

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Ejaz, M.; Kumar, T.; Kovacevic, I.; Ylianttila, M.; Harjula, E. Health-BlockEdge: Blockchain-Edge Framework for Reliable Low-Latency Digital Healthcare Applications. Sensors 2021, 21, 2502. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072502

AMA Style

Ejaz M, Kumar T, Kovacevic I, Ylianttila M, Harjula E. Health-BlockEdge: Blockchain-Edge Framework for Reliable Low-Latency Digital Healthcare Applications. Sensors. 2021; 21(7):2502. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072502

Chicago/Turabian Style

Ejaz, Muneeb, Tanesh Kumar, Ivana Kovacevic, Mika Ylianttila, and Erkki Harjula. 2021. "Health-BlockEdge: Blockchain-Edge Framework for Reliable Low-Latency Digital Healthcare Applications" Sensors 21, no. 7: 2502. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072502

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Author Biographies

Muneeb Ejaz

Muneeb Ejaz received the B.Sc. degree in telecommunication from COMSATS University, Pakistan, in 2009 and the M.Sc. degree from the University of Oulu, Finland, in 2020. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Center for Wireless Communication, University of Oulu, Finland. His current research interests include Internet of Things, cloud, edge, local/extreme edge computing and, blockchain.

Tanesh Kumar

Tanesh Kumar received the B.E. degree in computer engineering from the National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan, in 2012, and the M.Sc. degree in computer science from South Asian University, New Delhi, India, in 2014 and Ph.D in 2020 from the Centre for Wireless Communications Research Group, University of Oulu, Finland. Currently he is working as a postdoctoral researcher in the same research group. He has coauthored over 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles. His current research interests include security, privacy and trust in the IoT, edge computing, blockchain and Medical ICT.

Ivana Kovacevic

Ivana Kovacevic received the bachelor’s degree in electronics and telecommunication engineering from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 2012 and the M.Sc. degree in communications engineering from the University of Oulu, Finland, in 2015, where she is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in wireless networks. In 2015, she joined the Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu. Her research interest is in the area of network slicing, low latency communications, radio resource management, edge computing, network optimization theory, game theory and machine learning.

Mika Ylianttila

Mika Ylianttila (M. Sc, Dr.Sc, eMBA) is a full-time associate professor (tenure track) at the Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC), at the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE), University of Oulu, Finland. He leads NSOFT (Network security and softwarization) research group, at CWC Networks and Systems research unit, which studies and develops secure, scalable and resource-efficient techniques for 5G and beyond 5G systems. He is the director of communications engineering doctoral degree program. Previously he was the director of Center for Internet Excellence (2012-2015), vice director of MediaTeam Oulu research group (2009-2011) and professor (pro tem) in computer science and engineering (2005-2010). He received his doctoral degree on Communications Engineering at the University of Oulu in 2005. He has co-authored more than 180 international peer-reviewed articles. His research interests include network security, edge computing, network virtualization and software-defined networking. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, Editor in Wireless Networks and Associate Editor in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.

Erkki Harjula

Erkki Harjula is an Assistant Professor of Wireless System Level Architecture for Future Digital Healthcare at University of Oulu, Finland. He got a D.Sc. (Tech) degree in 2016 and M.Sc. (Eng) degree in 2007 from University of Oulu. Dr Harjula’s research interests include IoT communication, edge computing, distributed computing, distributed AI and distributed ledger technologies. In research, he is mostly concentrated in intelligent trustworthy distributed IoT and edge computing/communication in future digital healthcare. He has published more than 70 research articles, cited by more than 1100 times, and has an h-index of 18. He is an editorial board member in Springer Wireless Networks (WINE) Journal, and has acted as a guest editor or reviewer for several international scientific journals. He visited Columbia University in NY, USA, in winter 2008-2009. He has supervised numerous undergraduate and doctoral students and led several research projects. He is also a member of IEEE.

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