Designing A Blockchain-Empowered Telehealth Artifact for Decentralized Identity Management and Trustworthy...

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Cybersecurity
• Blockchain Technology

Background:

• Telehealth is crucial for healthcare delivery but faces significant privacy and cybersecurity risks.
• Existing telehealth platforms struggle with secure identity management and trustworthy communication channels.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities in telehealth identity management and communication.
• To design and prototype a blockchain-integrated software architecture for enhanced telehealth security and performance.

Main Methods:

• Employed an interdisciplinary approach combining design, social, and computer science.
• Utilized design science research methodology for prototype development.
• Integrated blockchain technology with a user-centric design for decentralized identity management and access control.

Main Results:

• Developed a decentralized telehealth platform using blockchain and smart contracts for secure identity management and communication.
• The prototype demonstrated resistance to common cyberattacks with acceptable performance, processing 10,000 transactions in 8 seconds.
• Achieved improved security, privacy, and efficiency in telehealth services.

Conclusions:

• Identified and addressed technical limitations in current telehealth platforms.
• Prototyped a blockchain-enabled distributed architecture for secure and trustworthy telehealth communication.
• The proposed system overcomes privacy, security, and scalability issues, paving the way for wider adoption of blockchain in telehealth.