Integrating blockchain technology and cloud services in healthcare: a security and privacy perspective

Throughout recent years, smart city development has gained considerable prominence because of its potential to enhance the living conditions of urban residents. This concept has a broad scope, covering a wide range of areas, including smart communities, smart transportation, and smart healthcare. Most smart city services, particularly healthcare-related, rely on the assessment, processing, and real-time sharing of big healthcare data to make intelligent decisions. Given the current state of the healthcare industry, it necessitates an ongoing supply of healthcare products and services, thereby enhancing its viability. Cloud-based services have made it increasingly important to develop new methods for discovering and selecting these services. Blockchain technology eliminates the need for centralized authorities in certifying and maintaining the integrity of information, facilitating transactions and exchanges of digital assets, and allowing for secure and pseudo-anonymous transactions and direct agreements between parties interacting. The technology possesses an array of key properties, including immutability, decentralization, and transparency, which may solve pressing healthcare issues, such as incomplete patient records at the point of care and difficulty accessing the information of individuals. This paper focuses on integrating blockchain technology and cloud computing in the healthcare industry to improve the security and privacy of medical data, reduce costs, and improve the efficiency of healthcare processes. Additionally, it can enable secure and direct communication between patients and healthcare providers.