BlockPres IPFS: performance evaluation of blockchain based secure patients prescription record storage using IPFS for smart prescription management system

BlockPres IPFS: performance evaluation of blockchain based secure patients prescription record storage using IPFS for smart prescription management system

연구 분야: Cryptography

학회: Cluster Computing

The incorporation of emerging technologies is driving the evolution of modern patient care models and shaping the future of healthcare systems. These advancements involve collecting, integrating, evaluating, and sharing patient data across various levels of the healthcare system, leading to significant transformations. This paper proposes a blockchain based system called” BlockPres” to address these challenges. The primary objective is to introduce an incentive mechanism that reduces inequalities and encourages patients to adopt the prescription management system. The proposed system securely stores patients’ prescription data on the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) while ensuring equal access for entities such as hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics. IPFS serves as a secure repository for prescription data and provides authenticity to the uploaded information. In this system, every healthcare provider has equitable access to patients’ data, and patients have the authority to grant permission to specific healthcare providers. Moreover, AI automates the process of granting permission and evaluates the process to provide accurate analytics and enhance the efficiency of transactions in BlockPres. The registration process for all entities within the network and the allocation of access rights ensure enhanced security and privacy. A proto type based on the BlockPres framework has been developed, and experiments were conducted to evaluate its performance using IPFS. The experimental setup utilized Remix IDE and Solidity language for smart contract development, and Ganache was employed to create virtual accounts for testing the prototype. Furthermore, the evaluation focused on key performance parameters such as speed, cost, and resource utilization of BlockPres during interactions with IPFS. The experimental results from the BlockPres-IPFS system experiments reveal significant insights into the performance of the blockchain-based secure patient prescription record storage. In Experiment 1, the upload speed for a subset of 11 patients' records was analyzed, with the standard error calculated to measure the accuracy and efficiency of the upload process. Experiment 3 focused on records sharing speed, where the standard error for various patients ranged from approximately ± 2809 ms to ± 5601 ms, indicating a close margin between experimental and simulated values. Additionally, gas consumption was evaluated, showing a linear increase with file sizes; for instance, the minimum gas consumption for a 75 kb file was 28,000 gwei, while the maximum for a 12,156 kb file reached 124,435 gwei, with a strong correlation (R2 = 0.9441) between gas consumption and file size. Furthermore, resource utilization experiments indicated that the computational speed of AES (128) was recorded at 5.2, while AES (256) achieved a speed of 9.3, demonstrating the efficiency of different encryption schemes used in the system.