Page 350 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 4

STS1080 Asma A. et al.
doesn’t require the capability to store images or audio directly as they’re not
being treated any different within the blockchain. Moreover, Hyperledger fails
to solve the issue of limited computational resources. As a system scales so do
the number of computation resources needed on each peer. For blockchain to
be adopted by the healthcare industry energy consumption and
computational resources will have to be evaluated.
It’s become standard for blockchain platforms to offer some sort of
encryption but Hyperledger allows developers to use what encryption
methods they see fit. This is extremely beneficial within the industry as it allows
hospitals to protect their data with the latest forms of encryption rather than
waiting for Hyperledger to release an update. Despite the flexible encryption,
Hyperledger offers no chaincode level encryption. It’s obvious that
Hyperledger expects all sensitive data to be stored off chain which is why they
only offer encryption to in-transit data. This direction Hyperledger is taking
seems to be an answer from all the criticisms blockchain has been getting
regarding data immutability. If data is stored off-chain, then the data
immutability of a blockchain becomes less of a significant problem.

4. Discussion and Conclusion
Throughout this report, multiple problems have been identified within
healthcare and blockchain has been proposed as a solution. The healthcare
industry has been identified as an ‘easy’ target for cyber-attacks but does
blockchain reduce the security risks? As shown in the results, blockchain offers
authenticity making it near impervious to impersonation attacks. Further to
this, the encryption capabilities displayed by blockchain makes safe from man-
in-the-middle attacks. Most importantly, the access control of blockchain
restricts the number of people who can view an EHR. As a result, data breaches
are less likely.
Does this mean that blockchain solves healthcare’s security threat? If
sensitive data is stored on the blockchain, the security benefits solve both the
high and low-level cyberattacks. However, it’s been shown that Hyperledger
wants data to be stored off-chain. A blockchain in this form only protects
reference data; reducing blockchain to a lookup table which doesn’t provide
any security on actual personal data. Sensitive data must be stored on the
blockchain to benefit the healthcare industry resulting in applications taking
more responsibility. The application must convert all data to text; provide
script-level encryption and a degree of access control to accommodate for
blockchain’s weaknesses.
An issue highlighted in this project is blockchain’s need for computational
resources and energy when data is stored on-chain. Unlike blockchain, the
cloud offers ubiquitous resources and is optimised for IoT. Despite this,
blockchain still provides a better platform for healthcare as security is a
necessity rather than an ideal function. It is essential that the scale of any

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