ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected daily life and caused a great loss to the global economy. Due to the very urgent need for identifying close contacts of confirmed patients in the current situation, the development of automated contact tracing app for smart devices has attracted more attention all over the world. Compared with expensive manual tracing approach, automated contact tracing apps can offer fast and precise tracing service, however, over-pursing high efficiency would lead to the privacy-leaking issue for app users. By combing with the benign properties (e.g., anonymity, decentralization, and traceability) of blockchain, we propose an efficient privacy-preserving solution in automated tracing scenario. Our main technique is a combination of non-interactive zero-knowledge proof and multi-signature with public key aggregation. By means of aggregating multiple signatures from different contacts at the mutual commitment phase, we only need fewer zero-knowledge proofs to complete the task of identifying contacts. It inherently leads to the benefits of saving storage and consuming less time for running verification algorithm on blockchain. Furthermore, we perform an experimental comparison by timing the execution of signature verification with and without aggregate signature, respectively. It shows that our solution can actually preserve the full-fledged privacy protection property with a lower computational cost. © 2022
ABSTRACT
During COVID-19, the explosive growth of demand for fresh agricultural products on E-commerce platform has increased the difficulty of maintaining the greenness and freshness in delivery. The traditional cold chain delivery is effective in keeping greenness, but its information asymmetry makes the freshness-keeping activities unable to be regulated, which may lead to the supply chain members giving up their freshness-keeping efforts. Can the blockchain technology effectively solve these problems? We consider a fresh agricultural product supply chain consisting of a supplier and an E-commerce platform (retailer). The retailer is responsible for the wholesale and sales of fresh agricultural products, and determines the blockchain adoption degree and advertising effort. The supplier is responsible for delivering fresh agricultural products to consumers, and determines the greenness investment and freshness-keeping effort. Based on the traditional and blockchain-based fresh agricultural product supply chain, we discuss the dynamic optimization of freshness-keeping effort, advertising effort, and blockchain adoption degree. Results show that the supplier will give up the freshness-keeping effort after receiving the wholesale funds in the traditional fresh agricultural product supply chain, which will naturally worsen the fresh agricultural products. When adopting blockchain technology, the supplier continues to make the freshness-keeping effort in delivery. And five specific settings are proved that blockchain is effective in maintaining freshness. But two other specific settings are determined that it is not suited for adopting blockchain. In addition, compared with the traditional fresh agricultural product supply chain, blockchain adoption can effectively reduce the freshness-keeping effort, advertising investment and goodwill for achieving the same profit margin level, and will not affect the greenness investment decision of the supplier. Our research can provide some insights into the cold chain logistics management of fresh blockchain. © 2022
ABSTRACT
Despite the blockchain's considerable potential to solve traditional supply chain problems, research on its deployment in pharmaceutical supply chains (PSC) is sparse. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for blockchain implementation within the pharmaceutical supply chain. To document the twelve-year research's, 78 transdisciplinary publications published between 2010 and 2022 were examined using a comprehensive literature review and text mining method. Descriptive and thematic research highlights emerging Blockchain trends in pharmaceutical supply chain. Future research will primarily focus on the use of Blockchain for drug counterfeiting and recall issues, as well as other sector-specific challenges like patient health data sharing, compliance, and clinical trials. The arguments and obstacles for technology acceptance, implementation steps and applications highlighted through the thematic analysis will help build the orientation for the research. Compared to other industries, research on blockchain for PSC has lagged, but it has picked up speed since the Covid-19 pandemic. Researchers and professionals will be guided by the identified influencing factors and implementation roadmap for adopting Blockchain in the pharmaceutical business. The suggested framework is original and offers manufacturers, ministry of health, and private sectors helpful guidelines to Leverage the power of blockchain technology. © 2023 Little Lion Scientific.
ABSTRACT
This chapter is a short introduction in the contemporary approaches aimed at the multidimensional processing and analysis of various kinds of signals, investigated in related research works, which were presented at the Third International Workshop "New Approaches for Multidimensional Signal Processing”, (NAMSP), held at the Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria in July 2022. Some of the works cover various topics, as: moving objects tracking in video sequences, automatic audio classification, representation of color video чpeз 2-level tensor spectrum pyramid, etc., and also introduce multiple applications of the kind: analysis of electromyography signals, diagnostics of COVID based on ECG, etc. Short descriptions are given for the main themes covered by the book, which comprises the following three sections: multidimensional signal processing;applications of multidimensional signal processing, and applications of blockchain and network technologies. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
As the global economy grapples with the advent of novel coronavirus and its variants, the aftermath has left all industries with ongoing uncertainties and incalculable loss of life and livelihood in most countries worldwide. In such unpredictable situations, the insurance industry and governments worldwide have become the prominent source of optimism to sail through the situation. This applies to the insurance industry globally, which is currently in the grip of fear due to the COVID-19 outbreak and anticipating significant economic slowdown and hardship because insurance rides on the back of other Industries. Therefore, to overcome a few of the tenacious roadblocks due to the COVID outbreak, Insurers will be forced to reassess all aspects of their business life cycle and take necessary steps to continue operations with minimum disruption. Precisely, the impact of COVID on General Insurers and Life and Health Insurers varied depending on the lines of business, product lines, and a bouquet of benefits offered by the insurers. The pandemic has taken a hit on new gross written premiums on specific lines of business, such as medical, travel, commercial, and business insurance. Few lines of business such as motor and home have remained muted during the COVID timeframe. However, the claims volumes for personal insurance (e.g., motor) have significantly decreased due to the lockdown and travel restriction;the industry has witnessed the highest claims volumes in life and health compared to the past several decades. They say, "As every dark cloud has a silver lining,” it has given an opportunity to many insurers to develop new products (e.g., Pay Mile Auto insurance) and push toward greater productivity, i.e., digital capability across product range which will result in an elevated position to understand and address to the customer and intermediary self-service (such as Portals) and implicit and explicit needs. Notably, the Insurance industry is likely to lean toward offering personalized yet custom-made products and services, which are sharply focused on preventative care and embracing digitalization across the value chain. Besides enabling scalability and connectivity, insurers are strategically focused on digitizing the core of the business and cloud implementation;automation across the insurance value chain is necessary to compete successfully with new innovative product development or inclusive business models. Around the globe, the insurance industry is continuously putting a deep focus on revitalizing the technology paradigm to grow and strive to achieve cost-effectiveness amid emerging markets, rapidly changing economic conditions and stiff competition from Insurtech. According to industry experts across geographies, growth may be a balanced blend of preventative and protective approaches, with a gamut of new and improved services and products, and insurers are deeply fostering redefining service-oriented strategies and innovative products. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
Blockchain is a technology based on a chain of interconnected blocks containing transaction history and user data. Blockchain permitted the creation of crypto-currency. Among its advantages: decentralization, transparency, and integrity. This technology has increased especially with the advent of covid19 with the accentuation of the wave of digitalization. Classic finance systems felt overwhelmed by events and tried to catch up with this new wave, by creating their crypto-currency, and embarking on this new world of digital finance where regulation and control are non-existent. Many central banks see the introduction of central bank digital currencies (MDBC) as a response to these challenges. But the phenomenal expansion of these crypto-currencies could present risks in terms of transmission of monetary policy, monetary creation, and financial stability. In this work, we will present the blockchain, the evolution of crypto-currency, and the reaction classic finance systems to this wave of digitalization of transactions, and especially to an absence of regulation. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Handling electronic health records from the Internet of Medical Things is one of the most challenging research areas as it consists of sensitive information, which targets attackers. Also, dealing with modern healthcare systems is highly complex and expensive, requiring much secured storage space. However, blockchain technology can mitigate these problems through improved health record management. The proposed work develops a scalable, lightweight framework based on blockchain technology to improve COVID-19 data security, scalability and patient privacy. Initially, the COVID-19 related data records are hashed using the enhanced Merkle tree data structure. The hashed values are encrypted by lattice based cryptography with a Homomorphic proxy re-encryption scheme in which the input data are secured. After completing the encryption process, the blockchain uses inter planetary file system to store secured information. Finally, the Proof of Work concept is utilized to validate the security of the input COVID based data records. The proposed work's experimental setup is performed using the Python tool. The performance metrics like encryption time, re-encryption time, decryption time, overall processing time, and latency prove the efficacy of the proposed schemes. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
ABSTRACT
The vaccine distribution system, being a bio-pharmaceutical cold chain, is a complicated and sensitive system that must be effectively managed and maintained due to its direct impact on public health. However, vaccine supply chains continue to be affected by concerns, including vaccine expiry, inclusion of counterfeit vaccines, and vaccine record fraud. The blockchain technology integrated with the Internet of Things (IoT) can create a solution for global vaccine distributions with improved trust, transparency, traceability, and data management, which will help monitor the cold chain, tackle counterfeit drugs, surveillance, and waste management. Several theoretical models for vaccine management with blockchain have recently been published, and a few pilot studies for COVID-19 vaccine management using blockchain have been started in India. Still, full-scale adoption of blockchain technology in vaccine distribution and management has yet to be achieved due to underlying barriers. This study explores the adoption barriers utilizing Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework with the help of extant literature and inputs from administrators, academics, immunization, and blockchain experts and then analyzed using the Delphi and fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) techniques. The finding shows that the requirement of change in organizational structure and policies is the most prominent barrier, and the barrier related to requirement of large-scale IoT infrastructure and lack of technical expertise are the most impactful barriers. The theoretical contribution of this study lies in the identification and analysis of barriers that should be addressed to achieve blockchain technology adoption in the vaccine supply chain. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
ABSTRACT
Recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are deployed in Novel Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) vaccine distribution process. To address issues of fake vaccine distribution, real-time massive UAV monitoring and control at nodal centers (NCs), the authors propose SanJeeVni, a blockchain (BC)-assisted UAV vaccine distribution at the backdrop of sixth-generation (6G) enhanced ultra-reliable low latency communication (6G-eRLLC) communication. The scheme considers user registration, vaccine request, and distribution through a public Solana BC setup, which assures a scalable transaction rate. Based on vaccine requests at production setups, UAV swarms are triggered with vaccine delivery to NCs. An intelligent edge offloading scheme is proposed to support UAV coordinates and routing path setups. The scheme is compared against fifth-generation (5G) uRLLC communication. In the simulation, we achieve and 86% improvement in service latency, 12.2% energy reduction of UAV with 76.25% more UAV coverage in 6G-eRLLC, and a significant improvement of ≈ 199.76 % in storage cost against the Ethereum network, which indicates the scheme efficacy in practical setups. © 2001-2012 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Personal health records (PHR) represent health data managed by a specific individual. Traditional solutions rely on centralized architectures to store and distribute PHR, which are more vulnerable to security breaches. To address such problems, distributed network technologies, including blockchain and distributed hash tables (DHT) are used for processing, storing, and sharing health records. Furthermore, fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) is a set of techniques that allows the calculation of encrypted data, which can help to protect personal privacy in data sharing. In this context, we propose an architectural model that applies a DHT technique called the interplanetary protocol file system and blockchain networks to store and distribute data and metadata separately;two new elements, called data steward and shared data vault, are introduced in this regard. These new modules are responsible for segregating responsibilities from health institutions and promoting end-to-end encryption;therefore, a person can manage data encryption and requests for data sharing in addition to restricting access to data for a predefined period. In addition to supporting calculations on encrypted data, our contribution can be summarized as follows: (i) mitigation of risk to personal privacy by reducing the use of unencrypted data, and (ii) improvement of semantic interoperability among health institutions by using distributed networks for standardized PHR. We evaluated performance and storage occupation using a database with 1.3 million COVID-19 registries, which showed that combining FHE with distributed networks could redefine e-health paradigms. © 2022 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
Traditionally, food sustainability has been considered solely in the stage of agricultural production. However, globalization, the expansion of the food production industry, and the emergence of supermarket chains that control the retail food market require specific significant changes in supply chains in the food sector and, therefore, we need to address the economic, social, and environmental impacts of these events. On the other hand, social selling has increased rapidly in recent years, with a further boom, following current events related to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This explosion of social sales, where there are usually no control and regulation entities, can bring problems associated with mishandling items. In this paper, we expose how Blockchain technology supports the traceability of social sales by validating the data provided by the chain participants such as digital health passports, production and transport data in the sale process;the proposed solution generates recommendations on productmanagement considering the agreements previously made by the network actors. To evaluate the proposed smart contracts, we useHyperledger Caliper, obtaining an average throughput of 12.6 transactions per second and an average latency of 0.3 s for the asset update process. We also use a study case to evaluate the proposed project platform's selling-transport stage using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. © 2023 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This paper employed an integrated model for examining behavioral intention to adopt blockchain technology in the supply chain management of manufacturing industries in Bangladesh. The proposed conceptual model was empirically tested using data collected from 189 supply chain managers working in manufacturing organizations in Bangladesh. The findings suggest that perceived usefulness, trading partners' pressure, and competitive pressure are the most important determinant of behavioral intention. © 2023 Taylor & Francis.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 pandemic has enforced the launch of vaccination campaigns worldwide. Along with it, it is equally important to guarantee that the supply chain of vaccination is accessible to all stakeholders. In this research, we look at how the COVID-19 vaccination program can aid in a variety of ways. We propose a system that ensures data integrity and efficient vaccination for beneficiaries. To guarantee, the registration is done on a first-come-first-served basis, eliminating identity theft and other forms of impersonation. Our proposed system vaccination supply chain management (VSCM) uses the Blockchain technology, where smart contracts are developed to monitor and trace the distribution supply. The technique asserts safe shipping and handling of vaccinations. Also we focus on reviving the importance of existing frameworks in supply chain management systems, its wide range of applications and the challenges faced. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to manage complex relations within the healthcare ecosystem. The role of new technologies in achieving this goal is a topic of current interest. Among them, blockchain technology is experiencing widespread application in the healthcare context. The present work investigates how this technology fosters value co-creation paths in the new digital healthcare ecosystems. To this end, a multiple case study has been conducted examining the development and application of blockchain by 32 healthcare tech companies. The results show blockchain technology adoption's current and potential impacts on value co-creation regarding data and resource sharing, patient participation, and collaboration between professionals. Three main areas of activity emerge from the case studies where blockchain implementation brings significant benefits for value co-creation: improving service interaction, impacting actors' engagement, and fostering ecosystem transparency. © 2022 by the authors.
ABSTRACT
The circular economy (CE) has emerged as a paradigm to protect the environment and the well-being of future generations. In parallel, Blockchain technology (BC) has emerged as a critical enabler for accelerating the transition toward a CE. In order to understand and summarize prior research on the role of BC in the CE, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of 70 seminal articles published before July 2022. Six main themes emerged: a) CE approaches and practices, b) BC and the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT), c) sustainable supply chain management, d) BC and the CE in the COVID-19 era, e) sector-specific BC applications, and f) barriers to BC adoption in the CE. Furthermore, we develop a comprehensive framework that integrates stakeholders, strategies and practices, industrial sectors and a BC-enabled CE. © 2022 The Author(s)
ABSTRACT
The outbreak of COVID-19 has exposed the privacy of positive patients to the public, which will lead to violations of users' rights and even threaten their lives. A privacy-preserving scheme involving virus-infected positive patients is proposed by us. The traditional ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) has the features of enhanced plaintext security and fine-grained access control. However, the encryption process requires the high computational performance of the device, which puts a high strain on resource-limited devices. After semi-honest users successfully decrypt the data, they will get the real private data, which will cause serious privacy leakage problems. Traditional cloud-based data management architectures are extremely vulnerable in the face of various cyberattacks. To address the above challenges, a verifiable ABE scheme based on blockchain and local differential privacy is proposed, using LDP to perturb the original data locally to a certain extent to resist collusion attacks, outsourcing encryption and decryption to corresponding service providers to reduce the pressure on mobile terminals, and deploying smart contracts in combination with blockchain for fair execution by all parties to solve the problem of returning wrong search results in a semi-honest cloud server. Detailed security proofs are performed through the defined security goals, which shows that the proposed scheme is indeed privacy-protective. The experimental results show that the scheme is optimized in terms of data accuracy, computational overhead, storage performance, and fairness. In terms of efficiency, it greatly reduces the local load, enhances personal privacy protection, and has high practicality as well as reliability. As far as we know, it is the first case of applying the combination of LDP technology and blockchain to a tracing system, which not only mitigates poisoning attacks on user data, but also improves the accuracy of the data, thus making it easier to identify infected contacts and making a useful contribution to health prevention and control efforts. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd
ABSTRACT
Purpose: The paper explores how consumer behavior for purchasing impulse products changed in the complex and disruptive (emergency) situation of the COVID-19 pandemic when the customer is shopping in-home and not visiting the offline stores in an emerging economy context. This paper further explores how digital transformations like the use of blockchain technology can aid offline/omnichannel retailers in reviving sales via permission marketing for impulse products. Design/methodology/approach: The authors followed a qualitative research design and conducted 24 personal interviews with millennials and 15 interviews with offline/omnichannel retailers from an emerging economy. The data collected were analyzed using the thematic analysis procedure. Findings: The authors discuss their findings under three themes – customers' conscious impulse buying during the pandemic, customers' unconscious impulse buying during the pandemic, and a viable solution for retailers in response to the pandemic. Practical implications: The authors suggest that marketers primarily from an offline/omnichannel store should adapt to permission marketing and use technologies like blockchain for the digital transformation of their marketing strategies. Doing so can help offline retailers minimize future damages in the retail sector during emergency situations. Originality/value: This paper is one of the first that explores how impulse – pure, suggestion, planned and reminder – purchases got affected during the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions in an emerging economy. This paper is also one of the first to explore the role of permission marketing and digital transformation by the use of blockchain in helping offline retailers in forming swift trust and practice trust-based marketing. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
With coronavirus (COVID) spreading across the world and the health care system being pushed toward more digitization and technology, last year was a unique year of human tragedy. There is a silver lining to this tragedy, that is, providers, payers, and pharma companies have shifted quickly toward better technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) blockchain, and so on.
ABSTRACT
The last catastrophic pandemic the world has seen was the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic, considering that it happened 102 years ago, one can perhaps leverage the technologic advancements over the past century to combat the current pandemic of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (COVID-19), which has already infected more than 16 million people globally and shut down the majority of the daily activities of life. The danger and challenge of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 lies in their highly contagious nature, spreading like wildfire with the potential to infect the majority of the world's population unless drastic measures are undertaken. In some countries, the social distancing and quarantine measures are either insufficient or ineffective as the number of cases is still on the rise. A major issue causing this rise is that most COVID-19 carriers appear asymptomatic. Identifying infected individuals as well as healthy/immune ones is the most crucial step in halting the disease spread. This is where the role of mass screening comes in.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has recently affected global trade flows, and the primary reason is that shipping failed to adapt rapidly to meet the need for on-time delivery. Given blockchain's "revolutionary” potential, this paper aims to understand how blockchain can address longstanding inefficiencies and challenges in the shipping industry. This analysis proposes a model of how an industrywide blockchain-based consortium powered by smart contracts could resolve end-to-end contract issues with trustworthiness, thus improving efficiency in terms of time and cost. A mixed-method approach was conducted. That included 27 surveys and 20 interviews with representatives of shipping industry members. This study contributes to the blockchain and shipping supply chain literature by offering empirical data about the application of an industry-led consortium blockchain with cost, scalability, and volatility perspectives. As for the managerial implications, incentives and education are required to stimulate collaboration and commitment to blockchain for more efficient and effective global shipping trade flows.