Instituto de Telecommunicaçoes, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal.
Faculty of Engineering and Science, University of Greenwich, Chatham Maritime ME4 4TB, UK.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Mar 22;22(7):2449. doi: 10.3390/s22072449.
Despite the significant benefits that the rise of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) can bring into citizens' quality of life by enabling IoMT-based healthcare monitoring systems, there is an urgent need for novel security mechanisms to address the pressing security challenges of IoMT edge networks in an effective and efficient manner before they gain the trust of all involved stakeholders and reach their full potential in the market of next generation IoMT-based healthcare monitoring systems. In this context, blockchain technology has been foreseen by the industry and research community as a disruptive technology that can be integrated into novel security solutions for IoMT edge networks, as it can play a significant role in securing IoMT devices and resisting unauthorized access during data transmission (i.e., tamper-proof transmission of medical data). However, despite the fact that several blockchain-based security mechanisms have already been proposed in the literature for different types of IoT edge networks, there is a lack of blockchain-based security mechanisms for IoMT edge networks, and thus more effort is required to be put on the design and development of security mechanisms relying on blockchain technology for such networks. Towards this direction, the first step is the comprehensive understanding of the following two types of blockchain-based security mechanisms: (a) the very few existing ones specifically designed for IoMT edge networks, and (b) those designed for other types of IoT networks but could be possibly adopted in IoMT edge networks due to similar capabilities and technical characteristics. Therefore, in this paper, we review the state-of-the-art of the above two types of blockchain-based security mechanisms in order to provide a foundation for organizing research efforts towards the design and development of reliable blockchain-based countermeasures, addressing the pressing security challenges of IoMT edge networks in an effective and efficient manner.
尽管物联网医疗（IoMT）的兴起通过启用基于 IoMT 的医疗保健监测系统为公民的生活质量带来了巨大的好处，但在赢得所有相关利益相关者的信任并充分发挥其在下一代基于 IoMT 的医疗保健监测系统市场潜力之前，需要迫切需要新的安全机制来有效地解决 IoMT 边缘网络面临的紧迫安全挑战。在这种情况下，区块链技术已被业界和研究界视为一种颠覆性技术，可以将其集成到基于 IoMT 的边缘网络的新型安全解决方案中，因为它在保护 IoMT 设备和防止在数据传输过程中未经授权的访问（即，医疗数据的防篡改传输）方面可以发挥重要作用。然而，尽管已经在文献中针对不同类型的物联网边缘网络提出了几种基于区块链的安全机制，但针对 IoMT 边缘网络的基于区块链的安全机制却很少，因此需要投入更多的精力来设计和开发基于区块链技术的安全机制。为此，第一步是全面了解以下两种类型的基于区块链的安全机制：（a）专门为 IoMT 边缘网络设计的极少数现有机制，以及（b）为其他类型的物联网网络设计的机制，但由于类似的功能和技术特点，可能会被采用在 IoMT 边缘网络中。因此，在本文中，我们回顾了上述两种类型的基于区块链的安全机制的最新研究进展，为设计和开发可靠的基于区块链的对策提供了基础，从而有效地解决了 IoMT 边缘网络的紧迫安全挑战。
