QUMA: Quantum Unified Medical Architecture Using Blockchain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The advent of quantum computing poses a significant threat to traditional blockchain systems based on number theory problems. Researching and developing quantum-resistant blockchain technologies holds both scientific and forward-looking significance. This paper proposes a novel quantum inspired blockchain system and constructs a unique entangled quantum medical record (EQMR)system with an emphasis on privacy and security.  

However, the manuscript lacks some important parts

§Specify the types of number theory problems that are vulnerable to quantum attacks in traditional blockchain systems.

§While the article has already presented a relatively clear English expression, making modifications similar to the following can further enhance clarity and ensure grammatical accuracy: In the line 59, sentence "Blockchain's decentralized storage is well suited for data ex-58 change between different medical organizations, and its one-of-a-kind data encoding techniques, which leads to the difficulty for accessing by unauthorized user," it is recommended to use "unauthorized users" instead of "unauthorized user" for grammatical correctness.

§ It is recommended to break down long paragraphs in the article into shorter sections to enhance readability. Extended paragraphs might lead readers to feel overwhelmed and struggle to follow the train of thought.
§ Construct Fig 5 which is not much clear. Reconstruct and improve visibility.
§ Construct a table for the Notations guide and add more symbols used in the manuscript to improve the readability of the manuscript.
§ Cite the algorithms, figures, and tables throughout the paper.
§ Add the most relevant and latest papers [pulished in 2021,22,23] for the proposed scheme comparison, which has been worked out on the Blockchain approaches. Like 10.1038/s41598-023-32701-6; 10.3390/e25030454; 10.1109/JBHI.2023.3288199; 10.32604/cmc.2023.038771

§ It is recommended for authors to avoid the plan writing for all the equations and symbols and used the equation function inside the word and in the case of latex editor use latex equation editor.
§ Also, use the superscript and subscript for special characters and symbols throughout the paper for a better understanding of readers.
§ Not explained the scalability issue for the proposed scheme if a new node joins the network how it would be handled.
§ In the references, section avoid the old ones and the conference papers and put some new recent papers from the theme research area.
§ Use the heading for the contribution part of the paper as Contribution and Motivation.

The advent of quantum computing poses a significant threat to traditional blockchain systems based on number theory problems. Researching and developing quantum-resistant blockchain technologies holds both scientific and forward-looking significance. This paper proposes a novel quantum inspired blockchain system and constructs a unique entangled quantum medical record (EQMR)system with an emphasis on privacy and security.  

However, the manuscript lacks some important parts

§Specify the types of number theory problems that are vulnerable to quantum attacks in traditional blockchain systems.

§While the article has already presented a relatively clear English expression, making modifications similar to the following can further enhance clarity and ensure grammatical accuracy: In the line 59, sentence "Blockchain's decentralized storage is well suited for data ex-58 change between different medical organizations, and its one-of-a-kind data encoding techniques, which leads to the difficulty for accessing by unauthorized user," it is recommended to use "unauthorized users" instead of "unauthorized user" for grammatical correctness.

§ It is recommended to break down long paragraphs in the article into shorter sections to enhance readability. Extended paragraphs might lead readers to feel overwhelmed and struggle to follow the train of thought.
§ Construct Fig 5 which is not much clear. Reconstruct and improve visibility.
§ Construct a table for the Notations guide and add more symbols used in the manuscript to improve the readability of the manuscript.
§ Cite the algorithms, figures, and tables throughout the paper.
§ Add the most relevant and latest papers [pulished in 2021,22,23] for the proposed scheme comparison, which has been worked out on the Blockchain approaches. Like 10.1038/s41598-023-32701-6; 10.3390/e25030454; 10.1109/JBHI.2023.3288199; 10.32604/cmc.2023.038771

§ It is recommended for authors to avoid the plan writing for all the equations and symbols and used the equation function inside the word and in the case of latex editor use latex equation editor.
§ Also, use the superscript and subscript for special characters and symbols throughout the paper for a better understanding of readers.
§ Not explained the scalability issue for the proposed scheme if a new node joins the network how it would be handled.
§ In the references, section avoid the old ones and the conference papers and put some new recent papers from the theme research area.
§ Use the heading for the contribution part of the paper as Contribution and Motivation.

Author Response

We would like to express our sincere thanks to the reviewers and editors for devoting their valuable time to review the paper and providing valuable, professional and rigorous comments! Your constructive comments are very important for the improvement and enhancement of the paper.

We accept your comments, and we have made comprehensive and systematic modifications and improvements to the thesis after careful consideration and several rounds of discussion, and we will now explain the specific modifications to you one by one. For your convenience, we have marked the manuscript with tracked changes, and we have also marked the areas that have been revised according to the suggestions made by reviewer 1, reviewer 2 and reviewer 3 in red, green and yellow respectively.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1.  Provide a more comprehensive overview of existing research in the intersection of quantum computing, medical architectures, and block chain technology. Highlight gaps in the literature that the proposed QUMA framework aims to address.

2. Elaborate how the scalability, security, privacy, and interoperability challenges in medical data management can be addressed in reference to your and previous researches.

3. What are the pros of adopting QUMA, such as enhanced data interoperability, streamlined medical workflows, improved patient outcomes, and reduced healthcare costs by using latest references.

4. Explore how QUMA accelerates medical research by providing researchers with access to comprehensive, securely stored healthcare data sets for analysis and discovery.

5. Give suggestions for increased education and awareness initiatives to inform healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the general public about the benefits and implications of QUMA.

6. Proofread the manuscript for grammatical errors.

7. Check  in text citation of figures and tables as few in text citations are missing e.g fig. 2 and 8. Also explain the outcomes

Extensive editing is required.

Author Response

We would like to express our sincere thanks to the reviewers and editors for devoting their valuable time to review the paper and providing valuable, professional and rigorous comments! Your constructive comments are very important for the improvement and enhancement of the paper.

We accept your comments, and we have made comprehensive and systematic modifications and improvements to the thesis after careful consideration and several rounds of discussion, and we will now explain the specific modifications to you one by one. For your convenience, we have marked the manuscript with tracked changes, and we have also marked the areas that have been revised according to the suggestions made by reviewer 1, reviewer 2 and reviewer 3 in red, green and yellow respectively.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This research introduces a novel quantum inspired blockchain system (Qchain) and performs a unique entangled quantum medical record system with an emphasis on privacy and security. Automated production of the chronology indicator reduces storage capacity requirements by connecting entangled blocks with quantum properties with controlled activities. A lot of information is included in the protocol for the entangled quantum medical record that can be accessed in Medical IoT systems may be kept private and secure with monitoring in the event of an emergency. The protocol uses quantum authentication in place of more conventional methods like encryption and digital signatures. Quantum converged blockchain should be robust against  the attacks  such as the External, Intercept-Measure-Repeat, and Entanglement-Measure ones. The reliability and auditability evaluations of the entangled BloQ, as well as the quantum circuit design for computing the hash value are presented. The authors try compare between the suggested approach and several other quantum blockchain designs.

Comments.

  1)     This reviewer proposes for better understanding design of this study presenting principal theory and definitions (2. Prelude) in the appendix.

    2)     This reviewer thinks that the section 3 where the authors discussed related works should be focusing on the drawbacks of previous proposals justifying in some of them that can be resolved in this study.   

    3)  This reviewer did not understand the material presented in sect. 6. Theoretical setting, where the only some pseudocode is presented. Such form maybe difficult for understanding by potential reader.

     4)   Subsect.7.2 Attacks and Analysis does not provide any numerical results about these attacks. Normally, there should be investigated attacks´ resistance comparing the quality of novel system against existing ones from state of the art.

    5)    Table 6. Pertinent comparisons with existing systems (subsect.7.4) presents general comparison of proposed system in qualitative abilities but does not give any quantitative comparison. There is not any discussion of such comparison.

     6)    Overall conclusion: the revised study lacks some practical examples of application for designed system and comparing it against existing similar systems.

Author Response

We would like to express our sincere thanks to the reviewers and editors for devoting their valuable time to review the paper and providing valuable, professional and rigorous comments! Your constructive comments are very important for the improvement and enhancement of the paper.

We accept your comments, and we have made comprehensive and systematic modifications and improvements to the thesis after careful consideration and several rounds of discussion, and we will now explain the specific modifications to you one by one. For your convenience, we have marked the manuscript with tracked changes, and we have also marked the areas that have been revised according to the suggestions made by reviewer 1, reviewer 2 and reviewer 3 in red, green and yellow respectively.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Figure 5 is not clear. Improve visibility.

2. Provide a more comprehensive overview of existing research in the intersection of quantum computing, medical architectures, and block chain technology. Highlight gaps in the literature that the proposed QUMA framework aims to address.

3. Highlight the references which are recently added.

Author Response

1.   Figure 5 is not clear. Improve visibility.

          We have included high quality image for better visibility.

2. Provide a more comprehensive overview of existing research in the intersection of quantum computing, medical architectures, and block chain technology. Highlight gaps in the literature that the proposed QUMA framework aims to address.

The newly added section 1.1 clearly addresses the existing research in the intersection of quantum computing, medical architectures, and block chain technology. Section 1.2 highlighted the gaps in the literature, that the proposed QUMA framework aims to address.

3. Highlight the references which are recently added.

Dear Reviewer, the manuscript already cites the recommended references. So, we haven’t included any new references. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors did not attend Comment 1. The comment was to present Prelude sect. theoretical material in appendix. This reviewer did not suggest explaining contributions.

This reviewer did not satisfy by authors´ answer on his comment 3.

This reviewer wrote in comment 4 “Subsect.7.2 Attacks and Analysis does not provide any numerical results about these attacks. Normally, there should be investigated attacks´ resistance comparing the quality of novel system against existing ones from state of the art. “The authors did not provide any comparison of quality for their system against existing ones only mentioning previously presented figs. 12-13.  

Comment 5 of this reviewer “Table 6. Pertinent comparisons with existing systems (subsect.7.4) presents general comparison of proposed system in qualitative abilities but does not give any quantitative comparison”. The authors presented some general discussion (lines627-633) and column “Limitation” in table 6. There is not any quantitative comparison.

Author Response

1. The authors did not attend Comment 1. The comment was to present Prelude sect. theoretical material in appendix. This reviewer did not suggest explaining contributions.

As per the reviewer suggestion, we have moved the prelude section and included in the appendix (Data section)

2. This reviewer did not satisfy by authors´ answer on his comment 3.

We apologize for providing incomplete data in this section. We have updated the section as 7. Results and Analysis: This section discusses the experimental set up along with system results for collision rate and multi hash collision analysis.

3. This reviewer wrote in comment 4 “Subsect.7.2 Attacks and Analysis does not provide any numerical results about these attacks. Normally, there should be investigated attacks´ resistance comparing the quality of novel system against existing ones from state of the art. “The authors did not provide any comparison of quality for their system against existing ones only mentioning previously presented figs. 12-13.  

Dear Reviewer, for intercept-resend attack, and Information traceability we have included a result graph and comparison with literature has been done in Table 7. But for ENMA attack, it is a scenario-based analysis, so we don’t get any numerical data, to produce a graph results (As the scenarios keep changing because we considered dynamic environment, and we did check with many literatures also, as no one produced graph data)

4. Comment 5 of this reviewer “Table 6. Pertinent comparisons with existing systems (subsect.7.4) presents general comparison of proposed system in qualitative abilities but does not give any quantitative comparison”. The authors presented some general discussion (lines627-633) and column “Limitation” in table 6. There is not any quantitative comparison.

Thanks to the reviewer for pointing out the quantitative comparison of existing systems. We conducted a thorough review of the literature in search of a quantitative comparison, but were unable to locate one. So, we introduced Table 7 as per the suggestion, and we found it novel in the research work.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

This reviewer does no any comment