Decentralising the Internet of Medical Things with Distributed Ledger Technologies and Off-Chain Storages: A Proof of Concept

The privacy issue limits the Internet of Medical Things. Medical information would enhance new medical studies, formulate new treatments, and deliver new digital health technologies. Solving the sharing issue will have a triple impact: handling sensitive information easily, contributing to international medical advancements, and enabling personalised care. A possible solution could be to decentralise the notion of privacy, distributing it directly to users. Solutions enabling this vision are closely linked to Distributed Ledger Technologies. This technology would allow privacy-compliant solutions in contexts where privacy is the first need through its characteristics of immutability and transparency. This work lays the foundations for a system that can provide adequate security in terms of privacy, allowing the sharing of information between participants. We introduce an Internet of Medical Things application use case called “Balance”, networks of trusted peers to manage sensitive data access called “Halo”, and eventually leverage Smart Contracts to safeguard third party rights over data. This architecture should enable the theoretical vision of privacy-based healthcare solutions running in a decentralised manner.