Energy Efficiency and Scalability Concerns of Blockchain in Medical Record Storage: A Literature Survey

Abstract

A possible solution is the use of blockchain to enhance the management of medical records in terms of security, privacy and interoperability. Since Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and data recorded on the MIoT device are becoming extremely large, the conventional centralized systems cannot sustain the pace, data integrity, and security against sophisticated computer-related attacks. Blockchain provides decentralized, irreversible, and unchangeable data processing potentials, but in its application, there are urgent issues that have been raised to energy usage and scalability. This review of the literature examines previous developments in blockchain-related healthcare systems, paying specific attention to authentication mechanisms, safe information sharing, privacy maintenance, and imaginative storage platforms. It points out increasing problem of resource-intensive consensus algorithms, like Proof of Work, incompatible with energy-sensitive uses, like hospitals. In addition, it looks into scalability bottlenecks, e.g., transaction throughput and the storage of information that constrain blockchain usability at scale in large-scale medical situations. Some of the proposed models are examined, such are consensus techniques that strive to minimize overhead while maintaining security and hybrid on-chain/off-chain storage systems. This survey ends up noting this gap in solutions and offering some suggestions on future directions of blockchain research to make it more efficient and adaptive to healthcare settings to foster even more secure and responsive healthcare information environments.