Blockchain for COVID-19: Review, Opportunities, and a Trusted Tracking System
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REVIEW–COMPUTER ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
Blockchain for COVID-19: Review, Opportunities, and a Trusted Tracking System Dounia Marbouh1 · Tayaba Abbasi2 · Fatema Maasmi2 · Ilhaam A. Omar1 · Mazin S. Debe2 · Khaled Salah2 Raja Jayaraman1 · Samer Ellahham3
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Received: 12 June 2020 / Accepted: 17 September 2020 © King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals 2020
Abstract The sudden development of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the limitations in modern healthcare systems to handle public health emergencies. It is evident that adopting innovative technologies such as blockchain can help in effective planning operations and resource deployments. Blockchain technology can play an important role in the healthcare sector, such as improved clinical trial data management by reducing delays in regulatory approvals, and streamline the communication between diverse stakeholders of the supply chain, etc. Moreover, the spread of misinformation has intensely increased during the outbreak, and existing platforms lack the ability to validate the authenticity of data, leading to public panic and irrational behavior. Thus, developing a blockchain-based tracking system is important to ensure that the information received by the public and government agencies is reliable and trustworthy. In this paper, we review various blockchain applications and opportunities in combating the COVID-19 pandemic and develop a tracking system for the COVID-19 data collected from various external sources. We propose, implement, and evaluate a blockchain-based system using Ethereum smart contracts and oracles to track reported data related to the number of new cases, deaths, and recovered cases obtained from trusted sources. We present detailed algorithms that capture the interactions between stakeholders in the network. We present security analysis and the cost incurred by the stakeholders, and we highlight the challenges and future directions of our work. Our work demonstrates that the proposed solution is economically feasible and ensures data integrity, security, transparency, data traceability among stakeholders. Keywords Blockchain · COVID-19 · Coronavirus · Ethereum · Trusted oracles · Smart contracts · Traceability · Tracking system · Transparency
1 Introduction The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in late 2019 caused a global health emergency around the world [1]. In just over three months, the number of coronavirus new cases has escalated to more than a million worldwide. The rapid transmission of the virus leads to new cases being reported globally by the hour. Simultaneously, the number of deaths
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Khaled Salah [email protected]
1
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi 127788, United Arab Emirates
2
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi 127788, United Arab Emirates
3
Heart and Vascular Institute, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
and infections continues to rise quickly. Consequently, the COVID-19 pandemic has
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