Free Essay Example - Blockchain Technology

Nowadays, there is a huge amount of data being used for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to derive knowledge concerning the world and perform automated decision making. This data contains sensitive or personal information, and so privacy is increasingly becoming relevant. Legislationall over the world is being sharpened to help maintain privacy. The European Union's GDPR administers the hypothesis of "Data protection by design and by default"(Schaefer &Edman, 2019). One of the aspects of this organization is to recognize the significance of transparency when handling personal data. Mostly on the web, a privacy policy is normally issued to the customers to accept. With this technology, the customer can have a more transparent log on the way their data has been used (Schaefer &Edman, 2019).

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Hybrid Blockchain Architecture

Blockchain technology is one that uses a peer-to-peer network that is decentralized to help develop and share transaction ledgers without a trusted authority being involved. Bitcoin is the first invented blockchain that any person can be part of. It is a public blockchain (Sharma & Park, 2018). The assumption is that private blockchain is well distributed throughout that enterprise. This means that numerous departments are operating the blockchain setup. Such a thing will make it difficult for any person in the department to adjust the stored log data(Schaefer &Edman, 2019).

The reason why blockchain was selected was that it comes with properties that are very important for the envisioned use case. Blockchains offer absolute traceability of the log data that is the foundation for data provenance. This property is very helpful when the objective is to follow where a personal data item is being processed, or for what purpose. There are various reasons for choosing Hyperledger Fabric and one of these reasons is that it is defined with a use case in mind. This, therefore, offers functionality that is normally only needed in an organization setting. Configurability is another reason that allows the adaptation of Fabric to the use case being executed(Sharma & Park, 2018).

In the proposed system for enhanced transparent privacy handling the permissioned blockchain has an important role in the performance benchmarks such as latency or transaction throughout. On the other hand, the public permissionless blockchain is not important for performance investigation (Schaefer &Edman, 2019).

The Approach to Managing Provenance Metadata and Data Access Rights in Distributed Storage Using the HyperledgerBlockchain Platform

There has been a high rate of flow of data from a variety of sources such as WWW, large scientific experiments, sensors, communication devices, etc. The beginning and development of widespread use of such sources begin the active penetration of technologies which use big data into development and research, and also public and commercial administration. With this awareness of changes in business and science, it is important to establish new architectures and the principles of the process of information systems. This is to help cope with the huge flow of data (Demichev et al., 2018).

Management of the Processes of exchange and storage of data using the HyperledgerBlockchain Platform

Using the proposed system normally assumes that a virtual organization is established for the joint operation of a specific project. The virtual organization includes numerous real organizations such as data providers, data handlers, and data users. Multiple cloud storage can be rented to form a distributed storage. In a business environment, the basis of hardware and software is formed by a set of storages such as tape storages, file servers, cloud storage, etc. Each of this storage has its data management system which manages it. The data is assumed to be stored as files and the file is a data unit(Demichev et al., 2018).

Metadata normally determines the state of data that consists of its global file identifier and its traits. Basic transactions include the following types: file download, new file upload, file deletion, file copy within storage, file transfer to storage, and file copy to storage. Every active transaction normally matches to an update of some state keys(Demichev et al., 2018).

HyperledgerBlockchain Platform

The natural solution for the development of a distributed immutable registry for the PMD records is the usage ofblockchain technology. To come up with a solution, it is important to utilize existing blockchain platforms. Hyperledger Composer is a set of tools for the basic usage of blockchain technology (Cachin, 2016). There are various advantages of Hyperledger Fabric combined with Hyperledger Composer. The first advantage is that it functions within the concept of permissioned blockchains. This is where transaction processing is conducted by particular trusted network members. Secondly, it offers the operation of smart contracts that allow individuals to organize the organization process of sharing resources for storage by the project participants situated in various administrative domains (Sharma & Park, 2018).

The other advantage is that it has advanced means of managing access rights to particular actions, and also access rights can be managed by members of the network within their competence. Again, it offers a record of transactions and advanced tools of query about both the present state of the system and its development. With its modular structure, it allows the use of various algorithms to reach an agreement between organization process participants. The other advantage is that it has an established built-in security system that is based on public key infrastructure(Demichev et al., 2018).

A Non-Fungible Token Tracking Proof-of-concept Using Hyperledger Fabric

There have been various studies to evaluate the usage of blockchainas a medium for data storage. This is because of the numerous advantages it offers by its decentralized nature and tamper-proof. Central Information Providers are there to act as main sources of information and act as a medium of exchange. They offer an implicit promise that the information they have is accurate and secure. By nature, the CIPs are centralized which means that there is only one point of failure for the entire system to break down (Bal&Ner, 2019). In public or permissionless blockchain, any person can send and participate in transactions while at the same time maintaining an anonymous identity. Mostly they include a native, embedded cryptocurrency. Permissioned blockchain like Hyperledger Fabric needs more layer of authentication to run among a group of participants who are identified(Bal&Ner, 2019).

Hyperledger Fabric is an open-source software project that is licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0. The architecture of Hyperledger Fabric differs from the present architecture of numerous other smart-contract-based blockchain platforms that matches a traditional state-machine replication strategy(Bal&Ner, 2019).

Comparison of Blockchain Frameworks for Healthcare Applications

With the rise of new technology, blockchain has increasingly become popular in recent times. This is due to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that are developed on the blockchain. Blockchain transactions have numerous features like data immutability and decentralized consensus that make it to be trustworthy, safe, and transparent (Agbo & Mahmoud, 2019). With this, blockchain has increasingly been adopted in various industries and for various uses. This is especially where trust and security are required. The healthcare industry is one which provides numerous use cases for the application of blockchain technology. Although, healthcare applications that are block-chain based are not widespread. The reason for this is that initial efforts were concentrated on making blockchain frameworks for cryptocurrencies but not for general-purpose applications like in health care (Angraal et al., 2017).

There has been an emergence of general-purpose blockchain frameworks that are used to establish healthcare applications. One of the challenges being faced by health information technology(HIT) is the breaches of medical records data. It is important to ensure that the medical records data are safeguarded because they are central to the diagnosis and treatment regimens of the patients (Agbo & Mahmoud, 2019). In this paper, it compares the common general-purpose blockchain frameworks, to the requirements for healthcare systems, to help guide researchers and practitioners of health informatics when selecting the right platform for establishing and experimenting with blockchain-based healthcare applications.

Technical Requirements for Blockchain-Based Healthcare Applications

There are various factors that need to be considered when selecting a technology stack for establishing healthcare applications. It is significant to understand the technical requirements for HIT systems when comparing the different blockchain frameworks popularly used in establishing healthcare applications (Zhang et al., 2018). When designing and developing healthcare applications it is important to protect the privacy of patients and their health records. There are legal and regulatory requirements that need to be fulfilled when processing healthcare data. Strict rules of how patient data is processed have been stipulated by the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect the privacy of the patients (Agbo & Mahmoud, 2019). Blockchain framework being developed for healthcare applications need to have a set of privacy features.

Security is another concern for HIT systems. These systems need to be developed and designed to avoid all manner of data theft. The security needs for healthcare applications are guided by a set of regulations which need to be respected. The blockchain frameworks being developed for healthcare applications need to implement granular-level access control mechanisms and robust authentication features to control the way participants interact with the network and other related data (Zhang et al., 2018). Transaction throughput is another important issue when choosing a technology stack for establishing healthcare applications. In the case of blockchain frameworks, the scalability or transaction throughput is a feature of the number of nodes that can take part in the consensus protocol. The other important factor to consider when selecting the technology framework for establishing healthcare applications is operational costs. The operational cost needs to be low and predictable hence blockchain-based healthcare applications need to be established on platforms with stable and predictable transaction fees or even no fees at all (Agbo & Mahmoud, 2019).