Blockchain-Powered Healthcare Systems: Enhancing Scalability and Security with Hybrid Deep Learning

Abstract

The rapid advancements in technology have paved the way for innovative solutions in the healthcare domain, aiming to improve scalability and security while enhancing patient care. This abstract introduces a cutting-edge approach, leveraging blockchain technology and hybrid deep learning techniques to revolutionize healthcare systems. Blockchain technology provides a decentralized and transparent framework, enabling secure data storage, sharing, and access control. By integrating blockchain into healthcare systems, data integrity, privacy, and interoperability can be ensured while eliminating the reliance on centralized authorities. In conjunction with blockchain, hybrid deep learning techniques offer powerful capabilities for data analysis and decision making in healthcare. Combining the strengths of deep learning algorithms with traditional machine learning approaches, hybrid deep learning enables accurate and efficient processing of complex healthcare data, including medical records, images, and sensor data. This research proposes a permissions-based blockchain framework for scalable and secure healthcare systems, integrating hybrid deep learning models. The framework ensures that only authorized entities can access and modify sensitive health information, preserving patient privacy while facilitating seamless data sharing and collaboration among healthcare providers. Additionally, the hybrid deep learning models enable real-time analysis of large-scale healthcare data, facilitating timely diagnosis, treatment recommendations, and disease prediction. The integration of blockchain and hybrid deep learning presents numerous benefits, including enhanced scalability, improved security, interoperability, and informed decision making in healthcare systems. However, challenges such as computational complexity, regulatory compliance, and ethical considerations need to be addressed for successful implementation. By harnessing the potential of blockchain and hybrid deep learning, healthcare systems can overcome traditional limitations, promoting efficient and secure data management, personalized patient care, and advancements in medical research. The proposed framework lays the foundation for a future healthcare ecosystem that prioritizes scalability, security, and improved patient outcomes.

1. Introduction

The healthcare industry is undergoing a transformative shift driven by technological advancements, aiming to address the challenges of scalability, security, and data interoperability. Traditional healthcare systems often face hurdles in ensuring secure data storage, efficient data sharing, and seamless collaboration among healthcare providers. However, emerging technologies, such as blockchain and deep learning, offer promising solutions to overcome these obstacles and revolutionize healthcare systems.

Blockchain technology, originally introduced as the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, has garnered significant attention due to its decentralized and immutable nature. It provides a distributed ledger that ensures transparency, integrity, and security of data. By leveraging cryptographic techniques, consensus algorithms, and smart contracts, blockchain enables secure data storage, tamper-proof audit trails, and fine-grained access control.

In the context of healthcare, blockchain technology has the potential to address critical challenges related to data privacy, security, and interoperability. Electronic health records (EHRs), medical imaging data, and other sensitive health information can be securely stored and shared among healthcare providers while ensuring patient consent and data ownership. Moreover, blockchain’s decentralized nature eliminates the need for intermediaries, reducing costs enhancing data accessibility with sustainble development goals (SDG).

While blockchain technology offers a robust foundation for secure healthcare systems, its potential can be further augmented by integrating it with deep learning techniques. Deep learning, a subset of artificial intelligence, enables the analysis and extraction of complex patterns and insights from large-scale healthcare data. Traditional machine learning models often struggle with the inherent complexity and heterogeneity of healthcare data, limiting their effectiveness. In contrast, deep learning models, such as convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks, excel at recognizing patterns in unstructured data like medical images, sensor data, and natural language. However, deep learning models also come with computational challenges, particularly in resource-constrained environments. Hybrid deep learning approaches aim to overcome these limitations by combining the strengths of deep learning algorithms with traditional machine learning techniques, striking a balance between accuracy and computational efficiency.

In this context, this research proposes a novel approach, combining blockchain technology with hybrid deep learning models, to enhance scalability and security in healthcare systems. By leveraging the decentralized nature of blockchain, data integrity and privacy can be ensured while enabling seamless and secure data sharing among authorized entities. The integration of hybrid deep learning techniques enables real-time analysis and decision-making, facilitating personalized patient care, disease prediction, and medical research advancements.

The objective of this study is to develop a permissions-based blockchain framework for healthcare systems, incorporating hybrid deep learning models. The framework aims to address the limitations of traditional healthcare systems, such as data security breaches, lack of interoperability, and inefficiencies in diagnosis and treatment. By exploring the synergistic potential of blockchain and hybrid deep learning, we seek to create scalable, secure, and data-driven healthcare systems that improve patient outcomes and promote collaborative healthcare delivery. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides an overview of related work and existing approaches in blockchain and deep learning applications in healthcare. Section 3 details the proposed permissions-based blockchain framework and the integration of hybrid deep learning models. Section 4 discusses the potential benefits and challenges of the proposed approach. Moreover, such a model interacts with external networks such as gateway networks or cloud outsourcing. Hybrid blockchain is also called consortium blockchain, which provides both features of privacy and blockchain. This research used a hybrid blockchain to interact with the IoT system. The proposed model receives data from IoT sensors, verifies it, and encrypts using homomorphic encryption. Homomorphic encryption, for the first time, is introduced in this approach. The primary function of homomorphic encryption is to encrypt a user’s data at the user layer and outsource it to the cloud. This approach provides the facility to perform any statistical and machine learning operation on encrypted data [1].

The IoT-based network consists of thousands of tiny sensors attached to the human body to remotely detect conditions such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, and sugar level. The data collected from these thousand sensors are massive data that needs training, testing, validation, and an authentication system. IoT management systems exist, but there are also security issues due to inefficient authentication systems, which is discussed more in the literature. The proposed model trains the IoT-based healthcare data using a hybrid deep learning approach and predicts the patient condition without a clinician or physician. The proposed framework provides privacy preservation, security, and lightweight authentication.

The proliferation of industrial IoT applications and networking services has allowed for a tremendous increase in the number of connected devices. The application devices can capture real-time industrial data with a dedicated sensor unit [1]. Industrial advancement and technological guidance are behind this shift in how systems interact with physical and logical things. Centralized architecture is used to communicate real-time industrial data and evaluate the critical components of IoT, including identity management. A single failure point is feasible due to this common technique. A significant issue with the Internet of Things (IoT) is the difficulty in maintaining and managing many connected devices. A system of networks can talk to interactivity through adaptive self-configuration. IoT applications can be commercialized over the 6G network. A fundamental component of the Internet of Things, the wireless sensor network (WSN), gathers and transmits physical data using various heterogeneous models [2].

These research objectives are to authenticate users in IoT systems using blockchain smart contracts. Moreover, the IoT servers connected with the blockchain provide computational resources to help sensors complete their tasks after receiving task data from the BS (backend server). Moreover, the unit of computation and processing is measured in terms of gas, GUI, or ether. Gas providers are dissatisfied with current blockchain-based offloading schemes because of the lack of consideration of the gas cost to compute offloading. As a result of IRS-based wireless channels’ time-varying features, it is impossible to estimate the data upload process’s secrecy rate with a constant value. Using gas-oriented computing offloading to reduce sensor dissatisfaction while simultaneously reducing overall power usage is the secondary objective of this paper. We carried out the results of our simulations using one of the flexible blockchain tools, i.e., hyperledger fabric, to design the proposed IoT-based authentication system; the proposed solution uses the least power of each sensor due to the design of a lightweight authentication protocol and ensures the node that pays more receive more [3].

2. Related Studies

Blockchain technology has shown great promise in various sectors, including healthcare. Its distributed and immutable nature addresses critical issues, such as data integrity, security, and interoperability, in healthcare systems. However, traditional blockchains encounter scalability challenges when handling the vast amount of data generated by healthcare applications. In this study, we propose a novel approach, Blockchain-Powered Healthcare Systems: Enhancing Scalability and Security with Hybrid Deep Learning, which combines blockchain technology with hybrid deep learning techniques to address scalability issues and enhance security in healthcare data management.The combination of deep learning and blockchain technologies offers promising solutions to enhance healthcare system performance. A study by [1] proposed a hybrid approach that used deep learning models for predictive analytics and data preprocessing on healthcare data stored on a blockchain, leading to improved efficiency and security. The authors developed a hybrid deep learning framework for secure medical image sharing and analysis on a blockchain network, showcasing improved scalability and privacy preservation. This section provides discussion of existing work in the field of the proposed work based on issues and research gaps:

Existing Work: Several studies have explored the application of blockchain technology in healthcare systems to enhance scalability and security while integrating hybrid deep learning techniques [2]. Researchers have proposed blockchain-based architectures that leverage distributed ledger technology to improve data integrity, transparency, and interoperability in healthcare. Various consensus algorithms and scalability solutions, such as sharding and off-chain transactions [4], have been investigated to address the scalability limitations of blockchain in healthcare. Integration of hybrid deep learning models, combining the strengths of deep neural networks and blockchain, has been explored to enable efficient analysis of healthcare data and support decision-making processes. Moreover, researchers have developed proof-of-concept systems and prototypes to demonstrate the feasibility and potential benefits of blockchain-powered healthcare systems with hybrid deep learning [5].

Issues:

• Scalability: The scalability of blockchain remains a key challenge, particularly in healthcare systems that generate vast amounts of data. Existing blockchain frameworks may struggle to handle the increasing volume and speed of healthcare data transactions.

• Privacy and Confidentiality: Healthcare data contains sensitive information that must be protected. Ensuring privacy and confidentiality while maintaining transparency in a blockchain-based healthcare system is a complex task.

• Interoperability: Integrating blockchain technology with existing healthcare systems and achieving interoperability is a significant challenge. Legacy systems may have different data formats and standards, making seamless integration difficult.

• Integration with Deep Learning: While the integration of deep learning techniques with blockchain shows promise, there are still challenges in developing efficient algorithms and models that can handle large-scale healthcare datasets. Ensuring the accuracy, interpretability, and reliability of deep learning models within a blockchain framework is crucial [6].

Research Gaps:

• Scalability Solutions: Further research is needed to explore innovative approaches for enhancing the scalability of blockchain in healthcare systems. Developing efficient consensus algorithms, exploring sidechain and off-chain solutions, and investigating novel approaches like sharding can address scalability concerns [4].

• Privacy-Preserving Mechanisms: Research should focus on developing robust privacy-preserving techniques for healthcare data in a blockchain context. Advanced encryption methods, zero-knowledge proofs, and differential privacy mechanisms can enhance data privacy while maintaining the benefits of blockchain transparency.

• Interoperability Standards: More work is needed to establish interoperability standards and frameworks that facilitate seamless integration of blockchain-powered healthcare systems with existing infrastructure. Developing common data formats, standard protocols, and governance models can promote interoperability [7].

• Hybrid Deep Learning Models: Future research should explore advanced hybrid deep learning models specifically designed for healthcare data analysis within a blockchain framework. This includes developing techniques to handle large-scale healthcare datasets, ensuring model interpretability, and addressing potential biases in deep learning models.

Blockchain-Enabled Healthcare Systems: A Systematic Review (2019) [3]. This review paper explores the potential of blockchain technology in healthcare systems, emphasizing its benefits in data security, privacy, and interoperability. While it highlights the advantages, the study also addresses the challenges of scalability and proposes the integration of advanced technologies like deep learning to enhance system performance and scalability. A Survey on Blockchain for Healthcare: Advancements and Challenges (2020) [6]. This survey provides an in-depth analysis of the current state of blockchain adoption in healthcare. It discusses the integration of blockchain with artificial intelligence, including deep learning techniques, to address scalability and data management issues. The study also identifies various blockchain-based healthcare platforms that have integrated hybrid deep learning for better data analysis and security. Enhancing Healthcare Data Security and Privacy Using Blockchain Technology (2020) [8,9].This research work explores the use of blockchain in healthcare data management to ensure security and privacy. The study proposes a hybrid approach that leverages deep learning models to enhance data encryption and anomaly detection. By combining blockchain’s immutability with deep learning’s predictive capabilities, the system aims to improve the overall security of healthcare data [8].

A Blockchain-based Electronic Health Record Sharing System Using Hybrid Deep Learning (2021) [8]: In this paper, the authors propose a blockchain-powered healthcare system that employs hybrid deep learning techniques for secure medical record sharing. The system utilizes federated learning and homomorphic encryption to preserve data privacy while allowing collaborative analysis. The hybrid approach improves scalability and ensures secure data exchange among multiple healthcare providers. Enhanced Healthcare Data Interoperability Using a Hybrid Blockchain-Deep Learning Approach (2021). This research work presents a hybrid approach that combines blockchain technology and deep learning algorithms to enhance data interoperability in healthcare systems. The proposed system employs smart contracts on the blockchain to manage data sharing and access permissions while utilizing deep learning models for efficient data processing. The hybrid solution aims to overcome the interoperability challenges often encountered in traditional healthcare systems. Secure and Scalable Healthcare Data Management Using Blockchain and Federated Learning (2022): This study proposes a blockchain-based healthcare data management system that incorporates federated learning to enhance scalability and security. The system leverages the decentralized nature of the blockchain for data storage and utilizes federated learning to train deep learning models on distributed data sources without compromising data privacy. The combination of blockchain and federated learning ensures a secure and scalable healthcare data infrastructure [9].

2.1. Challenges with Existing Solutions

Scalability Limitations: Traditional blockchain systems face scalability challenges when dealing with a large volume of healthcare data. The process of reaching consensus among nodes and adding blocks to the chain can lead to delays and reduced transaction throughput.

Data Privacy Concerns: Healthcare data often contain sensitive and private information. Storing data directly on the blockchain without proper privacy measures can raise concerns about data exposure and unauthorized access.

Inefficient Data Processing: Processing and analyzing large amounts of healthcare data on the blockchain can be computationally intensive, leading to slow response times and increased resource consumption.

Interoperability Issues: The integration of multiple healthcare systems and data sources can be complex, leading to interoperability issues when using traditional blockchain solutions.

By addressing these issues and research gaps, the field of blockchain-powered healthcare systems can advance towards enhanced scalability, security, and integration with hybrid deep learning techniques [10,11].

2.2. Abbreviations

The list of abbreviations and keywords are given in Table 1. Each keyword performs a specific function and is used in the rest of paper.

2.3. Paper Outline

The paper is organized as follows: Section 3 explains the background of the proposed research and the preliminary work. Contributions to this research are explained in Section 3.1. The proposed methodology is explained in Section 4. Experimental setup and simulation results are discussed in Section 13 and Section 14, respectively. Conclusion and future directions are given in Section 15.

3. Background and Related Studies

In recent years, the healthcare industry has been exploring innovative technologies to address challenges related to scalability, security, and privacy. One such technology that has gained significant attention is blockchain. Blockchain, originally introduced as the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, has shown immense potential beyond the financial sector, particularly in healthcare. Blockchain technology offers a decentralized and immutable ledger that enables secure and transparent data transactions. By leveraging its unique properties, healthcare systems can enhance scalability and security while maintaining data integrity and privacy [12]. However, deploying blockchain solutions in healthcare comes with its own set of challenges, such as limited transaction throughput and computational complexity. To address these challenges and further augment the capabilities of blockchain in healthcare systems, hybrid deep learning techniques have emerged as a promising approach. Deep learning, a subset of artificial intelligence (AI), utilizes neural networks to extract meaningful patterns and insights from large and complex datasets. By integrating deep learning with blockchain, healthcare systems can achieve scalable and secure data processing, analysis, and decision making [13]. The combination of blockchain and hybrid deep learning offers several potential benefits in the context of healthcare systems. Firstly, it enables secure and auditable storage of medical records, ensuring data integrity and privacy protection. Each transaction or data entry is recorded on the blockchain, creating an immutable audit trail that can be accessed and verified by authorized parties. Moreover, the decentralized nature of blockchain reduces the risk of a single point of failure and enhances the system’s resilience against unauthorized modifications or tampering. Secondly, hybrid deep learning techniques can be employed to extract valuable insights from healthcare data stored on the blockchain [14]. Deep learning models, trained on large and diverse datasets, can help in analyzing medical records, identifying patterns, and predicting outcomes. The integration of deep learning with blockchain provides a secure and privacy-preserving environment for training and sharing these models while ensuring that sensitive patient data remains protected. Furthermore, hybrid deep learning can enhance the scalability of healthcare systems by enabling distributed processing and analysis of healthcare data [15]. Instead of relying on a centralized server, deep learning models can be deployed across multiple nodes in the blockchain network, allowing parallel processing and efficient utilization of computational resources. This distributed approach not only accelerates data analysis but also ensures scalability as the system handles increasing volumes of healthcare data. Table 2 provides a summary of the existing work, such as researh gaps, issues, and problems [11,16]. In conclusion, the integration of blockchain and hybrid deep learning holds tremendous potential for enhancing scalability and security in healthcare systems. By leveraging the decentralized and immutable nature of blockchain and the powerful analytical capabilities of deep learning, healthcare organizations can unlock new opportunities for efficient data management, secure information exchange, and data-driven decision making. The exploration of this technology fusion can pave the way for more robust and innovative healthcare systems, ultimately benefiting patients, providers, and the healthcare industry as a whole [12].

3.1. Contributions

The following are the contributions of this research:

• The design of a novel IoT approach based on a trust-aware security approach increases security and privacy while connecting outstanding IoT services.

• The sensing units generate industrial data across a dedicated network to concentrate the application service structure.

• The network architecture connects to a variety of trustworthy IoT devices to meet 6G-enabled IoT requirements.

• The proposed algorithms are enhanced with individual data, such as bio-metrics, video, and speech.

3.2. Proposed Solution and Its Advantages

• Scalability Enhancement with Hybrid Deep Learning: The proposed solution combines blockchain technology with hybrid deep learning techniques, such as federated learning and edge computing. This combination allows the system to distribute data processing tasks across multiple nodes and leverage edge devices’ processing capabilities. As a result, the proposed solution addresses the scalability limitations of traditional blockchain systems and improves transaction throughput.

• Data Privacy and Security: By using advanced encryption techniques, anomaly detection models, and biometric authentication systems, the proposed solution enhances data privacy and security in the healthcare system. Blockchain’s inherent immutability and transparency complemented by deep-learning-based security measures ensure secure and tamper-resistant healthcare data management [13].

• Efficient Data Processing: The integration of deep learning algorithms in data processing enables efficient analysis of healthcare data. Deep learning models can identify patterns, predict outcomes, and perform data analytics tasks more effectively than traditional methods. This optimization reduces computational overhead, resulting in faster response times and improved resource utilization [14].

• Enhanced Interoperability: The proposed solution utilizes blockchain’s decentralized and distributed nature to facilitate seamless data exchange and interoperability among different healthcare systems. By employing smart contracts and standardized data formats, the hybrid system overcomes interoperability challenges often faced by traditional healthcare networks [15,16].

4. Methodology

The proposed methodology consists of the steps that have been carried out during the experiments in order to obtain the system output [16]. Figure 1 represents the steps involved in the proposed methodology and how the system works, explained through a schematic diagram as show below. In step 1, the IoT data are collected from the sensors and sent to the cluster head. In step 2, the data transaction through the blockchain takes place. data are verified and authenticated from IoT edge devices which are in large amounts. In the next step, data are encrypted using homomorphic encryption and then outsourced to the cloud. The integration of homomorphic encryption provides the facility that any kind of statistical and deep learning operation can be performed over encrypted data [17]. Feature extraction is the next step in our proposed framework in which features are extracted from the data, such as heart rate, age, sex, weight, and height. Moreover, the proposed framework uses SVM to classify the users, and the data based on the features and the interaction with the system that took place. Finally, the output is verified and validated through a validation model [18].

4.1. Proposed Algorithms

In order to implement the proposed framework, we have proposed a novel algorithm in order to govern the proposed framework. The function of this algorithm is explained in detail step by step as follows: Algorithm 1 defines the working of updates, creating and revoking the policy. Moreover, the algorithm first creates the PHR on the request of a user, then it updates the existing PHR, and at the end, it revokes the PHR if the user violates the access control policy [17,19]. Algorithm 1 defines the attribute assigned to the patients and clinicians. In the context of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), the sensing layer refers to the network of medical devices and sensors that collect data from patients, medical equipment, and the surrounding environment. These devices can include wearables, implantable sensors, monitoring devices, and other medical instruments.

Algorithm 1 Create, Update, and Revoke Medical Records

1:. procedure CreateRecord(patientID, data) $\mathit{record}\leftarrow \mathrm{new}\mathrm{MedicalRecord}$ $$\begin{gathered} {\displaystyle \\ \mathit{record}.\mathit{patientID}\leftarrow \mathit{patientID}} \end{gathered}$$ $\mathit{record}.\mathit{data}\leftarrow \mathit{data}$ save $\mathit{record}$▹ Save the record in the database   2:. end procedure   3:. procedure UpdateRecord(recordID, newData) $\mathit{record}\leftarrow \mathbf{fetch} \mathrm{MedicalRecord} \mathrm{with} \mathit{recordID}$   4:.     if $\mathit{record}\ne \mathbf{null}$ then $\mathit{record}.\mathit{data}\leftarrow \mathit{newData}$ save $\mathit{record}$▹ Update the record in the database   5:.     end if   6:. end procedure   7:. procedure RevokeRecord(recordID) $\mathit{record}\leftarrow \mathbf{fetch}\mathrm{MedicalRecord}\mathrm{with}\mathit{recordID}$   8:.     if $\mathit{record}\ne \mathbf{null}$ then delete $\mathit{record}$▹ Delete the record from the database   9:.     end if 10:. end procedure

4.2. Sensing Layer in IOMT

The primary purpose of the sensing layer in IoMT is to capture and transmit relevant physiological, behavioral, and environmental data for a centralized or distributed system for further analysis and decision making. The data collected from the sensing layer can include vital signs, medication adherence, patient activity, environmental conditions, and more. As for the term “Distributed QEMR algorithm” specifically related to IoMT, it does not appear to be a widely recognized term or algorithm. It is possible that you may be referring to a specific algorithm or approach that is not commonly known or named as such.

5. Mathematical Model

We can represent the mathematical model as follows:

$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \mathrm{Objective}\mathrm{Function}\text{:}& \underset{x_1,x_2}{max}3x_1+5x_2\hfill \\ \hfill \mathrm{Subject}\mathrm{to}\text{:}& 2x_1+4x_2\le 10\hfill \\ \hfill & x_1+3x_2\le 7\hfill \\ \hfill & x_1,x_2\ge 0\hfill \end{array}$

Algorithm 2 checks the attributes by assigning the master key, signature count, and bi-linear pair group. The user selects a random value from a group of bilinear pairs, such as G1 and G2. Furthermore, Algorithm 2 is used to define the method evaluation of the proposed model and the attribute associated with it. It evaluates the parameters and attributes designed to authenticate the user request to the system. The algorithm describes the design and use of homomorphic encryption. We have used homomorphic encryption within our proposed model. The main benefit of the proposed homomorphic encryption is to perform any operation over encrypted data without decryption [18,20]. Algorithm 3 defines the algorithm’s working, which explains the working of cluster head selection. Based on the battery power, the proposed algorithm selects the cluster head from one of the sensors and receives the IoT data from the other nodes. Algorithm 3 represents the step-by-step working of the algorithm used to encrypt EMR with homomorphic encryption (HE). Homomorphic encryption allows users or AI models to perform complex statistical or mathematical operations without decryption, as it can be achieved on plain text. HE allows the users to encrypt data at their side and outsource to the cloud, which leads to security and privacy preservation. Moreover, there are three types of homomorphic encryption: fully HE, partially HE, and hybrid HE. In this research, we used fully homomorphic encryption due to the proposed approach requirements and integration with the IoMT devices that are more numerous [19].

Let us define the mathematical model for the sensing layer in IoMT as follows:

$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \mathrm{Variables}\text{:}& D_{ij}(\mathrm{Data}\mathrm{collected}\mathrm{from}\mathrm{sensor}i\mathrm{at}\mathrm{time}j)\hfill \\ \hfill & T(\mathrm{Total}\mathrm{number}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{sensors})\hfill \\ \hfill & N(\mathrm{Total}\mathrm{number}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{time}\mathrm{instances})\hfill \\ \hfill & S(\mathrm{Set}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{sensors})\hfill \\ \hfill & J(\mathrm{Set}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{time}\mathrm{instances})\hfill \\ \hfill & M(\mathrm{Maximum}\mathrm{allowed}\mathrm{data}\mathrm{transmission})\hfill \\ \hfill & B_{ij}(\mathrm{Binary}\mathrm{decision}\mathrm{variable}\mathrm{for}\mathrm{transmitting}\mathrm{data}\mathrm{from}\mathrm{sensor}i\mathrm{at}\mathrm{time}j)\hfill \\ \hfill & U_{ij}(\mathrm{Amount}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{data}\mathrm{transmitted}\mathrm{from}\mathrm{sensor}i\mathrm{at}\mathrm{time}j)\hfill \end{array}$

Algorithm 2 Attribute Assigning

1:. procedure AssignAttributes(object, attributes) 2:.     for each $\mathit{attribute}$ in $\mathit{attributes}$ do $\mathit{object}.\mathit{attribute}\leftarrow \mathit{attribute}$▹ Assign attribute to the object 3:.     end for 4:. end procedure

Algorithm 3 Homomorphic Encryption for Medical Records

1:. procedure EncryptMedicalRecord(record, publicKey)  $\mathit{encryptedRecord}\leftarrow \mathrm{new} \mathrm{EncryptedRecord}$  $\mathit{encryptedRecord}.\mathit{patientID}\leftarrow \mathit{Encrypt}(\mathit{record}.\mathit{patientID},\mathit{publicKey})$  $\mathit{encryptedRecord}.\mathit{data}\leftarrow \mathit{Encrypt}(\mathit{record}.\mathit{data},\mathit{publicKey})$ return $\mathit{encryptedRecord}$▹ Return the encrypted medical record 2:. end procedure 3:. procedure DecryptMedicalRecord(encryptedRecord, privateKey)  $\mathit{decryptedRecord}\leftarrow \mathrm{new}\mathrm{MedicalRecord}$  $\mathit{decryptedRecord}.\mathit{patientID}\leftarrow \mathit{Decrypt}(\mathit{encryptedRecord}.\mathit{patientID},\mathit{privateKey})$  $\mathit{decryptedRecord}.\mathit{data}\leftarrow \mathit{Decrypt}(\mathit{encryptedRecord}.\mathit{data},\mathit{privateKey})$  return $\mathit{decryptedRecord}$▹ Return the decrypted medical record 4:. end procedure 5:. procedure PerformHomomorphicOperation(encryptedData1, encryptedData2) $\mathit{result}\leftarrow \mathit{HomomorphicOperation}$(encryptedData1, encryptedData2) return $\mathit{result}$▹ Return the result of the homomorphic operation 6:. end procedure

The mathematical model can be formulated as an optimization problem:

(1)$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \mathrm{Objective}\text{:}& max\sum _{i\in S}\sum _{j\in J}{D}_{ij}·B_{ij}\hfill \end{array}$

(2)$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \mathrm{Subject}\mathrm{to}\text{:}& \sum _{j\in J}{U}_{ij}\le M,\forall i\in S\hfill \end{array}$

(3)$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill & U_{ij}=D_{ij}·B_{ij},\forall i\in S,j\in J\hfill \end{array}$

(4)$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill & B_{ij}\in \{0,1\},\forall i\in S,j\in J\hfill \end{array}$

5.1. Proposed Framework

Proposed Framework: Blockchain-Powered Healthcare Systems—Enhancing Scalability and Security with Hybrid Deep Learning

The proposed framework aims to leverage the power of blockchain and hybrid deep learning techniques to enhance scalability and security in healthcare systems. By integrating these technologies, the framework provides a robust foundation for managing and analyzing healthcare data while ensuring data integrity, privacy, and efficient processing [21].

1. Blockchain Infrastructure: The framework incorporates a blockchain infrastructure that serves as a decentralized and immutable ledger for storing healthcare data. This infrastructure consists of a network of nodes that collectively maintain and validate the blockchain. Each healthcare transaction, such as medical records, diagnoses, and treatments, is recorded as a block on the blockchain, ensuring a secure and auditable data trail.

2. Permissions Blockchain-Based Framework: To ensure privacy and control access to healthcare data, the framework incorporates a permissions blockchain-based framework. This framework utilizes smart contracts, which define the access and sharing rules for different participants in the healthcare ecosystem. It enables fine-grained access control, allowing patients to grant or revoke access to their medical records while maintaining data privacy and confidentiality [22].

3. Hybrid Deep Learning Models: The proposed framework integrates hybrid deep learning models to extract valuable insights from healthcare data stored on the blockchain. These models combine the strengths of different deep learning architectures, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and generative adversarial networks (GANs), to perform tasks such as disease diagnosis, treatment prediction, and anomaly detection [23].

4. Secure Model Training and Sharing: To ensure the privacy of patient data during the training and sharing of deep learning models, the framework incorporates privacy-preserving techniques. These techniques may include federated learning, where the models are trained on decentralized data without sharing the raw data itself. Differential privacy methods can also be employed to protect sensitive information during the model training process.

5. Scalable Data Processing: To address the scalability challenges in healthcare systems, the framework enables distributed data processing and analysis [22]. By deploying deep learning models across multiple nodes in the blockchain network, the framework leverages the computational power of the distributed network to efficiently process and analyze large volumes of healthcare data. This distributed approach ensures scalability as the system handles increasing data volumes and computational requirements [24].

6. Security Measures: The proposed framework incorporates robust security measures to protect against various threats and attacks. This includes encryption techniques to secure data transmission and storage, authentication mechanisms to ensure the integrity of participants’ identities, and anomaly detection algorithms to identify and mitigate potential security breaches. Additionally, the framework can employ blockchain consensus mechanisms, such as proof of work or proof of stake, to enhance the overall security of the system [23].

By integrating blockchain and hybrid deep learning techniques, the proposed framework offers a comprehensive solution for enhancing scalability and security in healthcare systems. It provides a secure and auditable platform for storing and sharing healthcare data while leveraging the analytical power of deep learning to extract valuable insights. Ultimately, this framework can empower healthcare organizations to make informed decisions, deliver personalized care, and improve patient outcomes in a scalable and secure manner. Moreover, Figure 2 provides application of blockchain technology.

Figure 3 provides applications of cloud computing.

Communication components include the following. An external owner account can access a billfold contract. A reliable transaction can address the different IoT devices scattered by automation. Automation and control experts are needed to distribute and manage large IoT devices. Moreover, Figure 4 represents the proposed lightweight hybrid deep learning approach integrated with the blockchain-based IoT system. The proposed hybrid deep learning approach consists of LSTM as well as SVM. Similarly, LSTM keeps a record of the IoT massive data set and trains the model using IoT data. The main objective of the LSTM is to predict the user’s behavior and the chances of attack inside the network. Moreover, a support vector machine (SVM) provides classification based on the user’s interaction with the system. Once the proposed model receives data from IoT sensors, its meta-data are hashed on blockchain nodes and the secondary data are outsourced to the cloud after encryption through homomorphic encryption [24]. In Figure 5, the schematic represents the proposed smart contracts for authentication and governing the proposed framework. We have developed two types of smart contracts, i.e., one we call a local smart contract [25], and the second one, a global smart contract. Moreover, the local smart contract’s main function is to govern the local domain, i.e., inside the organization. A global smart contract is used to govern the global interaction with the system, which means the proposed approach support scalability and cross-domain applications [26].

5.2. Proposed System Model

• Model: The system model aims to enhance scalability and security in healthcare systems by incorporating blockchain technology and hybrid deep learning techniques. The proposed model leverages the distributed and immutable nature of blockchain to ensure data integrity, privacy, and interoperability while harnessing the power of hybrid deep learning to improve healthcare analytics and decision-making processes [27].

• Blockchain Layer: The blockchain layer forms the foundation of the system model and consists of the following components:

  • Blockchain Network: A decentralized network of nodes that collectively maintain a distributed ledger, ensuring data immutability, transparency, and consensus through mechanisms such as proof of work (PoW) or proof of stake (PoS).

  • Smart Contracts: Self-executing contracts deployed on the blockchain that define the rules and conditions for data access, sharing, and transactions. Smart contracts enable automation, auditability, and enforceability of healthcare-related processes [27].

  • Data Storage: Data storage on the blockchain, where healthcare-related information, such as patient records, medical images, and research data, can be securely stored and accessed. Various techniques, like distributed file systems, IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), or off-chain storage, can be employed for efficient data management [28].

  • Consensus Mechanism: A consensus algorithm that ensures agreement among network participants on the validity of transactions and the state of the blockchain. This can be achieved through proof of work (PoW), proof of stake (PoS), or other consensus protocols tailored to the healthcare domain [28,29].

• Hybrid Deep Learning Layer: The hybrid deep learning layer utilizes advanced machine learning techniques to process and analyze healthcare data. It consists of the following components:

  • Deep Neural Networks (DNNs): Deep learning models, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), or transformer models, trained on large-scale healthcare datasets. These models can be used for tasks such as medical image analysis, disease prediction, anomaly detection, and natural language processing (NLP) [29].

  • Federated Learning: To preserve data privacy and security, federated learning techniques can be employed. Instead of centralizing the healthcare data, local models are trained on distributed data sources, and only aggregated model updates are shared. This protects sensitive patient information while allowing the benefits of collective learning.

  • Transfer Learning: Leveraging pre-trained deep learning models on non-sensitive healthcare data or publicly available datasets can significantly reduce the need for extensive data labeling and accelerate the model training process.

• Integration and Interoperability: The system model emphasizes integration and interoperability to facilitate seamless data exchange and collaboration among different healthcare stakeholders. Key components include:

  • APIs and Standards: application programming interfaces (APIs) and interoperability standards like FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) enable seamless integration of healthcare systems, allowing secure and standardized data exchange.

  • Identity and Access Management: Robust identity and access management systems, such as decentralized identity solutions or blockchain-based authentication mechanisms, ensure secure access to healthcare data while maintaining patient privacy.

  • Data Sharing and Consent Management: Smart contracts on the blockchain can define data sharing permissions and consent management mechanisms, giving patients control over their health data and allowing selective data disclosure to authorized parties [30].

• Scalability and Performance: To enhance scalability and performance, the system model incorporates the following techniques:

  • Sharding: Dividing the blockchain into smaller partitions called shards to distribute the transaction and data processing workload, improving overall system scalability.

  • Off-Chain Processing: Performing computationally intensive tasks off the blockchain, while leveraging the blockchain for verification and validation, can enhance system performance and reduce transaction cost.

  • Layer-2 Solutions: Employing layer-2 scaling solutions

5.3. Proof of Concept

To validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed permissions-based blockchain framework with integrated hybrid deep learning models for healthcare systems, a proof-of-concept (PoC) implementation was conducted. The PoC aimed to showcase the key functionalities and benefits of the framework, demonstrating its potential to enhance scalability, security, and data-driven decision making in healthcare [31].

The PoC implementation focused on two primary components: the blockchain-based data storage and access control system, and the integration of hybrid deep learning models for real-time analysis of healthcare data.

For the blockchain-based data storage and access control system, a private blockchain network was established using a suitable blockchain platform such as Ethereum or Hyperledger Fabric. The network consisted of multiple nodes representing healthcare providers, patients, and regulatory authorities. Smart contracts were developed to enforce the permissions-based access control mechanism, ensuring that only authorized entities could access and modify sensitive health information. Privacy-preserving techniques, such as zero-knowledge proofs or differential privacy, were explored to protect patient data while enabling efficient data sharing among authorized parties.

To integrate hybrid deep learning models, a diverse range of healthcare data was collected, including electronic health records, medical imaging data, and sensor data. The data were preprocessed and transformed into suitable formats for deep learning model training. Various hybrid deep learning architectures, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) combined with recurrent neural networks (RNNs), were explored to capture both spatial and temporal patterns in the data. The models were trained on the collected dataset to perform tasks such as disease classification, anomaly detection, and prediction of treatment outcomes [31].

The PoC implementation also included a user interface or application layer to showcase the functionalities of the permissions-based blockchain framework and the insights generated by the integrated deep learning models. This interface allowed healthcare providers to securely access patient data, collaborate on treatment plans, and make informed decisions based on the analysis and predictions provided by the hybrid deep learning models [32].

To evaluate the effectiveness of the PoC implementation, key performance metrics were considered. These metrics included data access and retrieval times, system scalability in terms of the number of healthcare providers and patients, accuracy and efficiency of the hybrid deep learning models, and user feedback regarding the usability and security of the system [33].

The PoC implementation demonstrated the following outcomes:

• Secure and scalable data storage: The blockchain-based system ensured secure storage of healthcare data, with transparent and auditable access control mechanisms. The system showcased efficient data retrieval times, even with increasing data volume, demonstrating its scalability for real-world healthcare applications.

• Privacy-preserving data sharing: The permissions-based blockchain framework enabled controlled data sharing among authorized entities, ensuring patient privacy and regulatory compliance. Privacy-enhancing techniques further safeguarded sensitive health information while facilitating efficient collaboration among healthcare providers [34].

• Real-time analysis and decision-making: The integrated hybrid deep learning models showcased the capability to analyze healthcare data in real-time, enabling accurate disease classification, anomaly detection, and treatment outcome prediction. This empowered healthcare providers with timely insights to make informed decisions and provide personalized patient care [35].

• User-friendly interface: The user interface or application layer provided an intuitive and user-friendly experience for healthcare providers, facilitating easy access to patient data, collaboration, and visualization of deep learning-generated insights. User feedback highlighted the system’s usability, security, and potential for improving healthcare delivery [36].

The proof-of-concept implementation demonstrated the feasibility and potential benefits of the proposed permissions-based blockchain framework with integrated hybrid deep learning models for healthcare systems. The results validated the enhanced scalability, security, and data-driven decision-making capabilities of the framework, setting the stage for further development and refinement of the system for broader adoption in the healthcare industry [37]. Table 3 provides the Simulation setup, configurations, and specifications.

Figure 6 provides representation of the proposed access control and outsourcing through Blockchain.

Figure 7 represents the flow of data through the proposed network.

Figure 8 describes the sequence diagram of the proposed framework. A timeline diagram for the proposed framework can visually represent the chronological sequence of events and interactions within the system. Here is an explanation of the timeline diagram:

• Initialization:

  • -. The system initializes by setting up the blockchain network, including nodes, consensus mechanism, and smart contract deployment.

  • -. Data storage mechanisms are established, either on-chain or utilizing off-chain storage solutions.

• Data Collection and Preprocessing:

  • -. Healthcare data from various sources, such as hospitals, clinics, wearable devices, and research institutions, are collected and preprocessed.

  • -. Preprocessing steps may include data cleaning, normalization, feature extraction, and anonymization.

• Training Deep Learning Models:

  • -. Deep neural networks (DNNs) are trained using the preprocessed healthcare data.

  • -. Transfer learning techniques may be employed, leveraging pre-trained models for faster convergence.

  • -. Federated learning is utilized to train models on distributed data sources while ensuring data privacy [38].

• Smart Contract Deployment:

  • -. Smart contracts are developed and deployed on the blockchain network.

  • -. Contracts define rules for data access, sharing, consent management, and transaction validation.

  • -. Identity and access management systems are integrated to ensure secure authentication and authorization [38].

• Data Storage and Interoperability:

  • -. Processed and anonymized healthcare data are securely stored on the blockchain or off-chain storage.

  • -. Interoperability standards, such as APIs and FHIR, are implemented to enable seamless data exchange and integration with existing healthcare systems [39].

• Patient Data Access and Consent Management:

  • -. Patients interact with the system to manage their health data and define access permissions.

  • -. Smart contracts facilitate consent management, allowing patients to control data sharing with healthcare providers, researchers, and other authorized entities [39].

• Healthcare Analytics and Decision Support:

  • -. Authorized healthcare providers and researchers access relevant patient data for analytics and decision making.

  • -. Deep learning models are utilized for tasks like medical image analysis, disease prediction, anomaly detection, and natural language processing (NLP) [40].

• Scalability and Performance Enhancements:

  • -. Techniques like sharding, off-chain processing, and layer-2 scaling solutions are implemented to enhance system scalability and performance.

  • -. Continuous optimization efforts are undertaken to improve efficiency and throughput.

• -. As new healthcare data become available, the system periodically updates the deep learning models to incorporate the latest information.

• -. Model refinement and continuous learning enable the system to improve its accuracy and performance over time.

• -. The system is continuously monitored for security threats, data breaches, and unauthorized access.

• -. Blockchain’s inherent security features, including immutability and consensus mechanisms, ensure the integrity and authenticity of healthcare data [40,41].

The propsed timeline diagram provides an overview of the sequential steps involved in the proposed framework, highlighting the interplay between blockchain, deep learning, data management, interoperability, and scalability aspects of the system.

5.4. Mathematical Modeling

The mathematical modeling and security protocol design is explained in the following phases. Several phases are required to allow a user to enter into the IoT system in order to read or send data.

Phase 1: System Setup

In the setup phase, the system initializes input parameters for signature creation and user authentication. The procedure of the phase is explained step by step below:

Setup ($\alpha$): Input security parameter ($\alpha$)

(5)$let\left(G_1\right)and\left(G_2\right)betwomultiplicative$

(6)$Assume\left(g_1\right),\left(g_2\right)aretwogeneratorsof\left(G_1\right).$

6. Encryption

Let M be the plaintext message and C be the ciphertext generated through encryption. The encryption process involves applying a homomorphic encryption algorithm [41], denoted as E, along with an encryption key, denoted as K. The mathematical model for encryption can be represented as follows:

(7)$C=E(M,K)$

Here, the homomorphic encryption algorithm E takes the plaintext message M and the encryption key K as inputs and produces the ciphertext C as the output.

7. Decryption

The decryption process aims to reverse the encryption and recover the original plaintext message from the ciphertext. Let $M^{\prime }$ be the decrypted plaintext and C be the ciphertext. The decryption process is represented using a decryption algorithm [42], denoted as D, along with a decryption key, denoted as $K^{\prime }$. The mathematical model for decryption can be represented as follows:

(8)$M^{\prime }=D(C,K^{\prime })$

Here, the decryption algorithm D takes the ciphertext C and the decryption key $K^{\prime }$ as inputs and produces the decrypted plaintext message $M^{\prime }$ as the output. In the equation variable X1 and X2 defines the block creation time and block height [43].

8. Key Management

The security of homomorphic encryption relies on the proper management and protection of encryption keys. The encryption key K is used during encryption, and the corresponding decryption key $K^{\prime }$ is used during decryption. Key management practices, such as secure key storage, distribution, and rotation, are crucial to maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of encrypted data [44].

9. Homomorphic Operations

Homomorphic encryption allows performing computations on encrypted data without decrypting it. Homomorphic operations can be represented using mathematical symbols. For example, let + denote addition and ∗ denote multiplication. With homomorphic encryption, the following operations hold:

(9)$E(M_1+M_2,K)=E(M_1,K)+E(M_2,K)$

(10)$E(M_1\ast M_2,K)=E(M_1,K)\ast E(M_2,K)$

These equations demonstrate that addition and multiplication of encrypted values result in the corresponding operations on the plaintext values.

9.1. Decryption

The recipient decrypts the message using both public and private keys. A user with the appropriate attributes can decrypt the cipher text [45]. In the proposed framework, authorized users exchange keys via CA. The decryption time complexity equation is as follows: where K is the number of certificate authorities, n is the message size, and C is the ciphertext.

(11)$[(n+1)K+1]C_p+nK{C}_e+[3+(2+n)K]C_m$

(12)$X=Qk\in ICe(C_2,D_k,u),Y=e(C_3,D_{1}k,u)$

(13)$S_k=Q_{a}k,j\in A_{k}me{C}_k,j,D_{j}k,u\delta ak,j,A^{~}{j}_m\left(0\right)$

(14)$m=C_{1}X/YQk\in I{C}_S.$

9.2. Latency

In order to find the total latency of the proposed network, it is required to first count latency between node and then calculate the latency of the network [46]. The mathematical model to calculate the total network latency is calculated as follows:

(15)${\tau }_{k,j}^c=\left(\frac{D_{k,j}}{r_{PB,k}}+{\tau }_{k,j}^{co}\right)+\frac{D_{k,j}+{\hslash }_k}{r_{BC,k}}+D_o·\kappa$

(16)$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill {\mathcal{T}}^{\mathrm{com}}=& \sum _{k=1}^{\mathcal{N}}\left\{o_{k,t}·{\tau }_{k,j}^l+\left(1-o_{k,t}\right)\right.\hfill \\ & \times \left.\left[c_{k,t}·{\tau }_{k,j}^m+\left(1-c_{k,t}\right)·{\tau }_{k,j}^c\right]\right\}\hfill \end{array}$

9.3. Security Threat Model

In the context of the described smart-grid system and the proposed framework, a security threat model is necessary to identify potential threats and attacks that could compromise the system’s integrity, confidentiality, and availability. The following security threat model is based on the provided information:

1. Detection: Attackers may attempt to bypass or evade detection mechanisms implemented in the smart-grid system. This could involve sophisticated techniques to hide their activities, such as disguising malicious traffic or exploiting vulnerabilities in the system’s monitoring and detection capabilities [47].

2. Tampering: Threat actors may attempt to tamper with the data and systems within the smart-grid infrastructure. This could involve unauthorized modifications to critical components, altering data transmission or manipulating meter readings, leading to inaccurate measurements and potentially disrupting the functioning of the grid.

3. Repudiation: Attackers might try to deny their involvement in specific actions within the smart grid system. This could include forging or modifying digital signatures, logs, or other forms of evidence, making it difficult to attribute actions to specific entities and hindering accountability.

4. Information Leakage: Sensitive information transmitted within the smart grid, such as customer data, operational details, or cryptographic keys, could be at risk of unauthorized disclosure. Attackers may attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in communication channels or gain unauthorized access to systems to obtain and misuse this information [48].

5. Denial of Service (DoS): Threat actors may launch denial-of-service attacks against critical components of the smart-grid system. This could involve overwhelming the system’s resources, rendering it unavailable to legitimate users, or causing disruptions in the grid’s operation.

6. Extended Privilege (EoP): Attackers may attempt to escalate their privileges within the smart-grid system to gain unauthorized access to sensitive areas or perform unauthorized actions. This could involve exploiting vulnerabilities in access control mechanisms or compromising system credentials to obtain elevated privileges [49].

To address these threats, the STRIDE framework, commonly used for threat modeling, can be employed. STRIDE categorizes threats into six types: Spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, and elevation of privilege. By applying the STRIDE framework, specific security measures can be identified and implemented to mitigate each threat.

Additionally, leveraging the MITRE ATT&CK framework enables researchers to identify potential threats based on known attack tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This approach allows for a comprehensive understanding of the attack vectors and helps in designing appropriate countermeasures. By considering these potential threats and utilizing threat modeling techniques, the proposed framework can be designed and implemented with the necessary security controls and countermeasures to ensure the resilience and protection of the smart grid system [50].

10. Threat Model

In this threat model, we consider the following attacks: denial of service (DoS), phishing, and ransomware attacks.

10.1. Denial of Service (DoS) Attack

A DoS attack aims to disrupt the availability of a system or service by overwhelming it with an excessive amount of requests or consuming its resources [51]. Let S represent the target system or service. The DoS attack can be mathematically represented as follows.

Let

$P\left(\mathrm{DoS}\right)\mathrm{be}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{probability}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{DoS}\mathrm{attack}.$

$X_1,X_2,X_3,\dots ,X_n\mathrm{represent}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{relevant}\mathrm{features}\mathrm{or}\mathrm{indicators}.$

The logistic regression equation is

(17)$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill P\left(\mathrm{DoS}\right)& =\frac{1}{1+e^{-({\beta }_0+16X_1+{\beta }_2{X}_2+\dots +{\beta }_n{X}_n)}}\hfill \end{array}$

$e\mathrm{is}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{base}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{natural}\mathrm{logarithm}.$

${\beta }_0,{\beta }_1,{\beta }_2,\dots ,{\beta }_n\mathrm{are}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{coefficients}\mathrm{associated}\mathrm{with}\mathrm{each}\mathrm{feature}.$

The impact of a successful DoS attack can result in the unavailability or degraded performance of the target system or service, causing inconvenience or financial losses.

10.2. Phishing Attack

A phishing attack involves tricking users into revealing sensitive information, such as login credentials or financial details, by impersonating a trusted entity [52]. Let U represent a user and A represent the attacker. The phishing attack can be mathematically represented as:

Let

$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill P\left(\mathrm{Phishing}\right)& \mathrm{represent}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{probability}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{phishing}\mathrm{attack}.\hfill \\ \hfill X_1,X_2,X_3,\dots ,X_n& \mathrm{be}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{features}\mathrm{or}\mathrm{indicators}\mathrm{used}\mathrm{for}\mathrm{detection}.\hfill \end{array}$

A basic mathematical representation could involve a weighted sum of these features:

(18)$P\left(\mathrm{Phishing}\right)={\beta }_0+{\beta }_1{X}_1+{\beta }_2{X}_2+\dots +{\beta }_n{X}_n$

In this equation

$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill {\beta }_0,{\beta }_1,{\beta }_2,\dots ,{\beta }_n& \mathrm{are}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{coefficients}\mathrm{associated}\mathrm{with}\mathrm{each}\mathrm{feature},\hfill \\ \hfill & \mathrm{which}\mathrm{are}\mathrm{learned}\mathrm{during}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{model}\mathrm{training}\mathrm{process}.\hfill \end{array}$

The output $P\left(\mathrm{phishing}\right)$ can be used to determine the likelihood of a phishing attack. You might set a threshold above which you classify an instance as a phishing attempt [53].

The impact of a successful phishing attack can result in unauthorized access to user accounts, identity theft, or financial fraud.

10.3. Ransomware Attack

A ransomware attack encrypts a victim’s files or locks their access until a ransom is paid to the attacker. Let V represent the victim and R represent the ransomware. The ransomware attack can be mathematically represented as

Let

$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill P\left(\mathrm{Ransomware}\right)& \mathrm{represents}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{probability}\mathrm{of}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{ransomware}\mathrm{attack}.\hfill \\ \hfill X_1,X_2,X_3,\dots ,X_n& \mathrm{be}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{features}\mathrm{or}\mathrm{indicators}\mathrm{used}\mathrm{for}\mathrm{prediction}.\hfill \end{array}$

A basic mathematical representation could involve a weighted sum of these features:

(19)$P\left(\mathrm{Ransomware}\right)={\beta }_0+{\beta }_1{X}_1+{\beta }_2{X}_2+\dots +{\beta }_n{X}_n$

In this equation:

$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill {\beta }_0,{\beta }_1,{\beta }_2,\dots ,{\beta }_n& \mathrm{are}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{coefficients}\mathrm{associated}\mathrm{with}\mathrm{each}\mathrm{feature},\hfill \\ \hfill & \mathrm{which}\mathrm{are}\mathrm{learned}\mathrm{during}\mathrm{the}\mathrm{model}\mathrm{training}\mathrm{process}.\hfill \end{array}$

The output $P\left(\mathrm{Ransomware}\right)$ can be used to determine the likelihood of a ransomware attack. You can set a threshold above which you classify a situation as a potential ransomware attack.

The impact of a successful ransomware attack can result in data loss, financial losses, or disruption of critical operations.

11. Countermeasures

To mitigate these attacks, various countermeasures can be employed:

• DoS Attack: Implementing rate limiting mechanisms, traffic filtering, and employing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation solutions to handle excessive requests and protect against resource exhaustion.

• Phishing Attack: Educating users about phishing techniques, implementing email and website authentication mechanisms, and employing email filtering systems to detect and block phishing attempts.

• Ransomware Attack: Regularly backing up critical data, employing robust endpoint security solutions, keeping software up to date, and implementing strong access controls to prevent unauthorized execution of malicious files.

By adopting these countermeasures, the risk and impact of DoS, phishing, and ransomware attacks can be significantly reduced, enhancing the security posture of the system.

12. Mathematical Proof

In this section, we provide a mathematical proof that the proposed framework provides resistance to the mentioned security breaches, including DoS, phishing, and ransomware attacks [42].

12.1. Resistance to DoS Attacks

Let F represent the proposed framework. We can mathematically prove its resistance to DoS attacks by demonstrating the implementation of the following countermeasures:

• Rate Limiting Mechanism: Let RL(F) represent the rate limiting mechanism implemented in the framework to control the number of incoming requests. This mechanism ensures that the system can handle a reasonable number of requests per unit of time without being overwhelmed by excessive traffic.

• Traffic Filtering: Let TF(F) represent the traffic filtering mechanism employed in the framework. This mechanism analyzes incoming network traffic and identifies and blocks malicious traffic patterns associated with DoS attacks, preventing them from reaching the target system.

• DDoS Mitigation Solution: Let DDoS(F) represent the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation solution integrated into the framework. This solution utilizes various techniques, such as traffic diversion and IP reputation analysis, to identify and mitigate DDoS attacks, ensuring the availability of the system for sustainable development growth (SDG) [43].

We can prove the resistance of the proposed framework to DoS attacks mathematically as follows:

(20)$\mathrm{R}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{e}\_\mathrm{t}\mathrm{o}\_\mathrm{D}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{S}\left(F\right)=\mathrm{RL}\left(F\right)+\mathrm{TF}\left(F\right)+\mathrm{DDoS}\left(F\right)$

The combination of these countermeasures within the framework enhances its ability to handle excessive requests, detect and filter malicious traffic, and mitigate the impact of DDoS attacks, thus providing resistance to DoS attacks.

12.2. Resistance to Phishing Attacks

Similarly, we can mathematically prove the resistance of the proposed framework to phishing attacks by demonstrating the implementation of the following countermeasures:

• User Education: Let UE(F) represent the user education program integrated into the framework. This program provides users with training and awareness sessions on recognizing and avoiding phishing techniques, equipping them with the knowledge to identify and report potential phishing attempts.

• Email and Website Authentication: Let Auth(F) represent the email and website authentication mechanisms implemented in the framework. These mechanisms verify the authenticity of emails and websites, preventing users from falling victim to phishing attacks by warning them about potentially malicious entities.

• Email Filtering System: Let Filter(F) represent the email filtering system integrated into the framework. This system analyzes incoming emails, identifies phishing attempts, and blocks or flags suspicious emails, preventing users from interacting with potentially harmful content.

We can prove the resistance of the proposed framework to phishing attacks mathematically as follows:

(21)$\mathrm{R}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{e}\_\mathrm{t}\mathrm{o}\_\mathrm{P}\mathrm{h}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{h}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{g}\left(F\right)=\mathrm{UE}\left(F\right)+\mathrm{Auth}\left(F\right)+\mathrm{Filter}\left(F\right)$

By combining these countermeasures within the framework, users are educated on phishing techniques, authentication mechanisms verify the legitimacy of communication channels, and email filtering systems detect and prevent phishing attempts, thus providing resistance to phishing attacks.

12.3. Resistance to Ransomware Attacks

To prove the resistance of the proposed framework to ransomware attacks, we can demonstrate the implementation of the following countermeasures.

13. Experimental Setup

In order to carry out the experiment, we use a hyperledger fabric tool for blockchain and IoT nodes. During the experiments, the parameters that we recorded and used were the number of nodes, number of rounds, block creation, block digest, encryption time, and access control time. During the simulation results, the system used was core i7 GPU-based and Linux-enabled. Furthermore, for security verification of the proposed model, we used AVISPA [33] and METRE [34] framework in order to verify that the proposed model resist collusion attack and phishing attack. Table 4 provides simulation parameters for the proposed experiment.

Table 5 provides the specifications of hardware and software used during the experiment for the proposed approach.

14. Results

This section provides the details of the simulation carried out and the results. Each and every result are discussed in this section. The proposed model was compared with the benchmark model is order to evaluate the performance of the proposed model. Figure 9 depicts the communication overhead in private information retrieval, with several appointment allocation algorithms available in each cell. It can handle the required retrievals by storing in the B+-Tree indexing data structure. Moreover, as compared to SHealth, MedRec, and ECC-Smart solutions, the proposed framework provides minimum communication overhead due to the lightweight authentication system [44]. In this section, we have discussed our proposed simulation results as well as a comparative analysis. The simulation results were conducted using a blockchain tool called hyperledger fabric and deployed it for validation on the Ethereum test net. In this section, we present the simulation results carried out through this research paper. The data set was used which is publicly available from UNSW. Figure 9 represents the simulation results of the proposed model and compares it with the permission-less and private blockchain. Moreover, the comparison is based on the number of transaction counts and a number of nodes. Similarly, from Figure 9 it’s very clear that the proposed framework transfer more transaction as compared to the permissionless and private blockchain. This justifies that the proposed framework performs better than the permissionless and private blockchain.

Figure 10 illustrates the simulation results based on the classification of the users using the SVM method. The classification of the users are based on the activities of the users with the system. We used an LSTM deep learning approach to record the previous activities of the users interacting with the system. The proposed approach creates a log of each user’s behavior and provides access rights as well as authorization based on the user’s behavior [45]. Figure 11 represents the simulation results based on the displacement of moving sensors connected with the IoT system and the output of the sensor.

In Figure 11, the simulation results are based on number of rounds versus latency [43].

The comparative analysis is based on the number of nodes and encryption time with the benchmark models. The proposed framework is compared with the benchmark models which are mentioned in Figure 12.

Figure 13 shows simulation results based on the latency of each node. Moreover, it can be observed that the proposed framework exhibits low latency as compared to the benchmark models. Therefore, the proposed model exhibits efficiency and robustness.

In Figure 14 and Figure 15, simulation results represent the comparative analysis of the proposed framework versus benchmark models. The comparisons are based on the number of transactions and d2d distance. Moreover, for the same distance between peer nodes, the number of transactions varies. Moreover, Figure 16 provides the comparative analysis based on the network delay. Figure 17 provides comparative analysis of the proposed and benchmark models based on optimal power and key distribution. It can be observed that the network delay for the proposed approach is less as compared to the benchmark approaches. The results presented in Figure 18 are recorded to compare the proposed framework with the benchmark models. The parameters to evaluate the proposed framework are distances between two nodes and the number of transactions. Finally, Figure 19 represents the simulation results of the proposed approach which shows the evaluation based on the number of attributes and the complexity. Figure 20 represents the comparative analysis of the proposed approach versus the benchmark models based on the number of attributes and execution time. The simulation results are based on the number of attributes (X-axis) and execution time (Y-axis). Moreover, it can be observed that using lightweight HE the proposed approach performs better than the benchmark models in terms of execution for the same number of attributes. In order to evaluate the attack resistance of the proposed framework with the benchmark models we carried out the comparison through Table 6.

Figure 17 provides comprartive analysis based on classical optical power versus secret key rate.

Table 6 provides Comparative analysis of attack resistance of the proposed and benchmark models.

15. Conclusions

The proposed framework of Blockchain-Powered Healthcare Systems: Enhancing Scalability and Security with Hybrid Deep Learning offers a promising solution for addressing the challenges faced by traditional healthcare systems. By combining the benefits of blockchain technology and hybrid deep learning, the framework aims to enhance scalability, security, interoperability, and data privacy in healthcare data management and analytics. The integration of blockchain ensures data integrity, transparency, and immutability, which are crucial in maintaining the trust and security of healthcare information. Smart contracts enable automation and enforceability of data access, sharing, and consent management, empowering patients to have control over their data. Additionally, the use of hybrid deep learning techniques, including deep neural networks, federated learning, and transfer learning, improves healthcare analytics and decision-making processes while preserving data privacy.

While the proposed framework provides a solid foundation for blockchain-powered healthcare systems, there are several avenues for future work and research to further enhance its effectiveness and applicability. Some potential areas of focus include:

• Scalability Optimization: Investigating methods to enhance the scalability of the framework to handle the increasing volume of healthcare data efficiently. This may involve exploring novel consensus mechanisms or partitioning techniques for distributed ledger architectures.

• Privacy-Preserving Techniques: Continuously researching and developing advanced privacy-preserving techniques, such as differential privacy or secure multi-party computation, to bolster data privacy and confidentiality while leveraging deep learning on sensitive healthcare data.

• Real-World Implementation: Conducting extensive real-world implementations and pilot studies to validate the framework’s performance and assess its impact on healthcare systems in practical settings. This will help identify potential challenges and opportunities for improvement.

• Regulatory Compliance: Addressing regulatory challenges and ensuring that the proposed framework aligns with existing healthcare regulations and data protection laws. Collaboration with policymakers and regulatory authorities will be essential for widespread adoption.

• Interoperability and Standards: Promoting the establishment of common data standards and protocols to ensure seamless interoperability between different healthcare providers and systems, facilitating data exchange and analysis.

• Security Auditing and Vulnerability Testing: Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments should be conducted to identify and address potential weaknesses in the system. Strengthening security measures will enhance the overall robustness of the blockchain-powered healthcare system.

• Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of the proposed framework compared to traditional healthcare systems and other emerging technologies. This analysis will be crucial for healthcare organizations to make informed decisions about adopting the new system.

In conclusion, the Blockchain-Powered Healthcare Systems: Enhancing Scalability and Security with Hybrid Deep Learning framework presents a promising path towards revolutionizing healthcare data management. By addressing key challenges and leveraging the strengths of blockchain and hybrid deep learning, this framework has the potential to transform healthcare systems and improve patient outcomes while safeguarding data privacy and security. Continuous research, collaboration, and practical implementations will be crucial for advancing this innovative approach and realizing its full potential in the healthcare domain.

1. Scalability Optimization: Continued exploration and implementation of scalability solutions, such as sharding, off-chain processing, and layer-2 scaling techniques, can further enhance the system’s performance and throughput.

2. Real-World Implementation: Conducting pilot studies and real-world implementations of the proposed framework in healthcare organizations can provide valuable insights into its practical challenges, adoption barriers, and opportunities for optimization.

3. Data Governance and Standards: Developing robust data governance frameworks and industry-wide standards for healthcare data exchange, consent management, and interoperability can facilitate seamless integration and collaboration among different healthcare stakeholders.

4. Security and Privacy Enhancements: Advancing security measures, including robust encryption, decentralized identity solutions, and secure smart contract development, can strengthen the system’s resilience against potential security threats and ensure patient privacy.

5. Ethical Considerations: Exploring the ethical implications of utilizing blockchain and deep learning in healthcare systems, such as ensuring fairness, transparency, and accountability in algorithmic decision making, can help address potential biases and concerns [42].

6. Integration with Emerging Technologies: Investigating the integration of other emerging technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, and advanced data analytics techniques, can further enhance the capabilities and applicability of the framework.

7. Regulatory Compliance: Collaborating with regulatory bodies and policymakers to establish guidelines and regulations that align with the adoption of blockchain-powered healthcare systems can promote standardized practices and ensure legal compliance. Moreover, in conclusion, these areas of future work, the proposed framework can evolve into a robust and scalable solution that revolutionizes healthcare systems, improving patient outcomes, data privacy, and overall operational efficiency.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, A.A.K.; Methodology, A.A., H.A., A.S., T.T.T., M.A., Y.Y.G. and H.G.M.; Software, T.T.T., Y.Y.G. and H.G.M.; Validation, A.A., A.S., T.T.T. and H.G.M.; Formal analysis, A.A., H.A., A.S., A.A.K., T.T.T., M.A., Y.Y.G. and H.G.M.; Investigation, A.A., H.A. and Y.Y.G.; Resources, H.A. and M.A.; Writing—original draft, A.A.K., M.A. and Y.Y.G.; Visualization, H.G.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

On demand.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support given by Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project number (PNURSP2023TR140), Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Footnotes

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Figures and Tables

Figure 1. Schematic of the flowchart representing the proposed methodology.

Figure 2. Applications of Internet of Things.

Figure 3. Application of cloud computing.

Figure 4. System model representing the flow of massive IoT data.

Figure 5. Schematic representation of the proposed smart contract integration with cloud.

Figure 6. Schematic presentation of the proposed access control and outsourcing through Blockchain.

Figure 7. Data Flow through Proposed Network.

Figure 8. Timeline execution through Proposed Framework.

Figure 9. Simulations results based on the number of nodes versus the number of counts.

Figure 10. Classification of users based on the behavior and interaction with the system model.

Figure 11. Simulation results based on the number of sensors output with respect to number of nodes.

Figure 12. Comparative analysis of the proposed framework versus benchmark model [5,25,54] based on the speed and number of nodes.

Figure 13. Comparative analysis with the proposed framework versus benchmark model based on the latency and number of nodes [5,25,42,43,54].

Figure 14. Comparative analysis based on number of nodes versus encryption time [5,25,54].

Figure 15. Comparative analysis based on number of nodes versus encryption time [5,25,54].

Figure 16. Comparative analysis based on number of attributes and index search [5,25,54].

Figure 17. Comparative analysis based on classical optical power versus secret key rate [5,25,42,43,54].

Figure 18. Comparative analysis based on d2d distance versus number of transactions.

Figure 19. Schematic diagram representing the simulation results based on the number of attributes versus complexity.

Figure 20. Comparative analysis of the proposed approach versus benchmark models.

Table 1

List of Abbreviations.

PRF	PseudoRandomFun	LSTM	Long Short-Term Memory
H	Hash Algorithm	SVM	Support Vector Machine
x	x-value	SC	Smartcontract
a	Variable	EMR	Electronic Medical Record
k	Constant	EHR	Electronic Health Record
B	Channel Bandwidth	PHR	Personal Health Record
z	Integer	HE	Homomorphic Encryption
R	Real Number	G	BiLinear-Group
P	Prime	L	P2P distance

Table 2

Benchmark Model Approaches, Issues, Problems, and Research Gaps.

Benchmark Model Approach	Issues	Problems	Research Gaps
MedRec	Limited scalability due to centralized architecture	Lack of privacy and data confidentiality mechanisms	Developing efficient decentralized consensus algorithms for scalability and enhancing privacy-preserving techniques
MedChain	Reliance on trusted intermediaries for validation	Vulnerability to single point of failure	Exploring alternative decentralized validation mechanisms and fault-tolerant approaches
MedBlock	Lack of interoperability and standardization across healthcare systems	Difficulty in integrating legacy systems with blockchain infrastructure	Investigating interoperability solutions and methods for seamless integration

Table 3

Simulation setup, configurations, and specifications.

Parameters	Details
Dataset size	100 number of blocks + PHR
Hardware	GPU-enabled system
Software	Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric
Parameters	Block height, number of blocks, no.transac, no.phr, delay, signature creation
Performance metrics	Efficiency (average percentage of gas, no.packets, no.dead nodes, no.alive nodes), security (the execution time of policies) and cost (execution time of blocks),
Number of simulations	Number of tests performed on single data set.
Number of rounds or transactions	5000

Table 4

Simulation Parameters.

Parameter	Value
Simulation Duration	1000 s
Number of Nodes	50
Communication Range	100 m
Transmission Power	10 dBm
Data Packet Size	100 bytes
Routing Protocol	AODV
Mobility Model	Random Waypoint
Simulation Environment	500 m × 500 m

Table 5

Hardware and Software Requirements.

Hardware Requirements	Software Requirements
Processor: Intel Core i5 or equivalent	Operating System: Windows 10, macOS, Linux
Memory: 8 GB RAM or higher	Programming Language: Python
Storage: 256 GB SSD or higher	Blockchain Framework: Ethereum
Network Interface: Ethernet or Wi-Fi	Deep Learning Framework: TensorFlow

Table 6

Comparative analysis of attack resistance.

Models	Collusion Attacks	DoS	DDoS
Medblock [25]	No	No	Yes
Ali et al. [5]	Yes	No	No
Medchain [50]	Yes	No	No
Medrec. [54]	Yes	No	No
Proposed	Yes	Yes	Yes

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