Optimizing blockchain for healthcare IoT: a practical guide to navigating scalability, privacy, and efficiency trade-offs

Abstract

The adoption of blockchain technology provides significant disruptive benefits to internet-of-things (IoT) applications in healthcare in vital aspects like security, integrity, transparency, and efficiency. Nevertheless, in order to fully realize the potential of blockchain-driven solutions, healthcare organizations have to address intricate compromises between essential factors including scalability, privacy and resource utilization considering that the data sensitivity alongside strict regulatory compliance requirements characterize this sector. This research discusses the fundamental aspects of these trade-offs, including the range of consensus protocols (e.g. proof-of-work, proof-of-stake) and cryptographic techniques (e.g. zero-knowledge proofs, homomorphic encryption). A systematic choice matrix is created, which relates specific use cases of the healthcare IoT to the optimal tailored blockchain structures on such critical metrics as transaction volume, frequency, privacy level and resource restrictions. The suggested framework provides solid, actionable recommendations to healthcare organizations in order to help them benefit from the enormous promise of the blockchain for connected IoT healthcare by finding a balance between decentralization advantages and performance, security and compliance requirements.