Blockchain-enabled Internet of Medical Things to Combat COVID-19
This work addresses security and privacy issues in healthcare systems for patients and providers during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it appears incremental as it applies existing blockchain technology to IoMT without novel breakthroughs.
The paper tackles security and privacy vulnerabilities in Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) systems, proposing a blockchain-enabled IoMT approach to address these concerns and discussing its potential applications to combat COVID-19.
We are experiencing an unprecedented healthcare crisis caused by newly-discovered corona-virus disease (COVID-19). The outbreaks of COVID-19 reveal the frailties of existing healthcare systems. Therefore, the digital transformation of healthcare systems becomes an inevitable trend. During this process, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) plays a crucial role while intrinsic vulnerabilities of security and privacy deter the wide adoption of IoMT. In this article, we present a blockchain-enabled IoMT to address the security and privacy concerns of IoMT systems. We also discuss the solutions brought by blockchain-enabled IoMT to COVID-19 from five different perspectives. Moreover, we outline the open challenges and future directions of blockchain-enabled IoMT.