Integration of Blockchain and Cloud Computing for Secure Healthcare Data Management in IoMT Environments

The combined use of blockchain and cloud technologies offers a disruptive opportunity to enhance the security, privacy, and interoperability of healthcare data, especially in the context of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). As IoMT devices for real-time monitoring and diagnosis continue to proliferate, vast amounts of sensitive patient data are generated and transmitted in real-time across networks that are often insecure, to large, centralized data repositories vulnerable to hacking, data loss, and unauthorized access. This paper presents a blockchain-based cloud architecture designed to protect electronic health records (EHRs) and enable reliable data sharing across distributed IoMT environments. By leveraging blockchain’s decentralized architecture, tamper-proof nature, and consensus mechanism, the system effectively supports access control, data lineage, and tamper evidence. Meanwhile, cloud computing offers scalability, on-demand resources, and the ability to support the data-intensive applications of IoMT. To illustrate existing threats to cloud-based healthcare systems and recent developments in blockchain use cases, with a special focus on smart contracts, proxy re-encryption, and zero-knowledge proofs, a comprehensive review of the literature is provided. The proposed hybrid model facilitates the secure storage of information on IoMT devices, ensures privacy-preserving data sharing, supports real-time decision-making, and addresses challenges.