IEEE Blockchain Technical Briefs - July 2018
A collection of short technical articles

Best on the Block - Welcome to the IEEE Blockchain Technical Briefs

By Chonggang Wang, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Blockchain Technical Briefs

Blockchain. The market for this fast-growing technology is expected to hit $20 billion by 2024. It has the potential to transform industries far beyond its roots in banking -- supply chain, IoT, and power and energy, for example. With an eye to shaping the future of this disruptive technology, we'd like to welcome you to the inaugural issue of the quarterly IEEE Blockchain Technical Briefs.

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MedRec: Patient Control of Medical Record Distribution

By Andrew Lippman, MIT; Nchinda Nchinda, Candidate for MS in Computer Science at MIT; Kallirroi Retzepi, Graduate Student, Viral Communications group at MIT; and Agnes Cameron, Master’s Student, Viral Communications group at MIT

Increasingly, people in the United States are required to manage their own healthcare and associated information. The days of the lifetime family doctor are over. At the same time, healthcare providers have to make that data available. This circumstance opens the door for innovative approaches to patient management. One obvious solution is a “Swiss bank” for healthcare records. This offloads engaged patient management to a cross-provider intermediary. In return for that convenience, we risk the addition of new data silos and commercial control points.

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Enabling Multilevel Data Sharing Based on Blockchain and Smart Contract

By Chunming Rong, University of Stavanger; and Antorweep Chakravorty, University of Stavanger

Blockchain for the social good: From the current “data is the future currency” by major social media channels to new ways of managing your data sharing so that “you are the boss of your own data” with new business models built on a network of trust.

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For Want of a Stronger Chain

By Jason Rupe, Ph.D., CableLabs, IEEE Blockchain Initiative Co-Chair

The permissionless, distributed blockchain has gained significant appeal and attention, but this attention is mostly premature to understanding the risk tradeoffs, and separate from the value to be obtained in the future after the industry invents better solutions.

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Secure and Privacy-preserving Smart Contract-based Solution for Access Control in IoT

By Chao Lin, Key Laboratory of Aerospace Information Security and Trusted Computing, Ministry of Education, School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China; Debiao He, Key Laboratory of Aerospace Information Security and Trusted Computing, Ministry of Education, School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China; Xinyi Huang, School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Fujian Normal University, China; and Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Department of Information Systems and Cyber Security, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, USA

Internet of Things is, as the name suggests, a network of Internet-enabled objects (e.g. sensors and smart devices) with applications in smart homes, smart cities (e.g. medical and health-care settings, and intelligent transportation). The interconnection of physical objects provides efficient data collection and sharing in IoT applications, although there are also underpinning security concerns (e.g. potential data or privacy leakage). Hence, one particular area of focus it to design an effective and (provably) secure access control scheme to protect related resources (e.g. the collected or processed data) against unauthorized access (or modification).