CoviChain: A Blockchain Based Framework for Nonrepudiable Contact Tracing in Healthcare Cyber-Physical Systems During Pandemic Outbreaks

With the world facing the new virus SARS-CoV-2, many countries have introduced instant Internet applications to identify people carrying the infection. Internet-of-Medical-Things (IoMT) have proven useful in collecting medical data as well in tracing an individual carrying the virus. The data collected or traced belongs to an individual and should be revealed to themselves and hospital providers, but not to any third-party unauthorized agencies. In this paper we use an off-chain distributed storage solution for loading large medical data sets and a blockchain implementation to securely transfer the data from the infected person to the hospital system using the edge infrastructure, and call it CoviChain. The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) statistics are loaded on to the edge, and moved to InterPlanetary File Systems (IPFS) storage to retrieve the hash of the data file. Once the hash is obtained, it is moved to the blockchain by means of smart contracts. As the information is being hashed twice, CoviChain addresses the security and privacy issues and avoid exposing individuals’ data while achieving larger data storage on the blockchain with reduced cost and time.