TY - JOUR
T1 - A global blockchain for recording high rates of COVID-19 vaccinations
AU - Medina, Jorge
AU - Rojas-Cessa, Roberto
AU - Dong, Ziqian
AU - Umpaichitra, Vatcharapan
N1 - Funding Information: Ziqian Dong received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). She is currently a Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, New York Institute of Technology (NYIT). Her research interests include architecture design and analysis of high-performance packet switches, data center networks, network security and forensics, wireless sensor networks, and assistive medical devices. She is a Senior Member of the IEEE Communications Society, IEEE Women in Engineering, and a member of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), ACM, and the Environmental Sensing, Networking and Decision-Making (ESND) technical committee. She has served in the Technical Program Committee of IEEE GLOBECOM, ICC, HPSR, Sarnoff, GREENCOM, and as a Reviewer for IEEE journals, conferences, and U.S. National Science Foundation panels. She was a recipient of the 2006 and 2007 Hashimoto Fellowship for outstanding scholarship, the 2008 Hashimoto Prize for the best Ph.D. dissertation in electrical engineering at NJIT, the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame Graduate Student Award for her inventions in network switches, the NYIT Presidential Engagement Award in Student Engagement in Research and Scholarship, and 2020 ASEE Curtis W. McGraw Research Award. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2023/9
Y1 - 2023/9
N2 - Blockchain has been recently proposed to securely record vaccinations against COVID-19 and manage their verification. However, existing solutions may not fully meet the requirements of a global vaccination management system. These requirements include the scalability required to support a global vaccination campaign, like one against COVID-19, and the capability to facilitate the interoperation between the independent health administrations of different countries. Moreover, access to global statistics can help to control securing community health and provide continuity of care for individuals during a pandemic. In this paper, we propose GEOS, a blockchain-based vaccination management system designed to address the challenges faced by the global vaccination campaign against COVID-19. GEOS offers interoperability between vaccination information systems at both domestic and international levels, supporting high vaccination rates and extensive coverage for the global population. To provide those features, GEOS uses a two-layer blockchain architecture, a simplified byzantine-tolerant consensus algorithm, and the Boneh–Lynn–Shacham signature scheme. We analyze the scalability of GEOS by examining transaction rate and confirmation times, considering factors such as the number of validators, communication overhead, and block size within the blockchain network. Our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of GEOS in managing COVID-19 vaccination records and statistical data for 236 countries, encompassing crucial information such as daily vaccination rates for highly populous nations and the global vaccination demand, as identified by the World Health Organization.
AB - Blockchain has been recently proposed to securely record vaccinations against COVID-19 and manage their verification. However, existing solutions may not fully meet the requirements of a global vaccination management system. These requirements include the scalability required to support a global vaccination campaign, like one against COVID-19, and the capability to facilitate the interoperation between the independent health administrations of different countries. Moreover, access to global statistics can help to control securing community health and provide continuity of care for individuals during a pandemic. In this paper, we propose GEOS, a blockchain-based vaccination management system designed to address the challenges faced by the global vaccination campaign against COVID-19. GEOS offers interoperability between vaccination information systems at both domestic and international levels, supporting high vaccination rates and extensive coverage for the global population. To provide those features, GEOS uses a two-layer blockchain architecture, a simplified byzantine-tolerant consensus algorithm, and the Boneh–Lynn–Shacham signature scheme. We analyze the scalability of GEOS by examining transaction rate and confirmation times, considering factors such as the number of validators, communication overhead, and block size within the blockchain network. Our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of GEOS in managing COVID-19 vaccination records and statistical data for 236 countries, encompassing crucial information such as daily vaccination rates for highly populous nations and the global vaccination demand, as identified by the World Health Organization.
KW - Block commitment time
KW - Blockchain
KW - COVID-19
KW - Electronic vaccination records
KW - Global vaccination
KW - Healthcare blockchain
KW - High transaction throughput
KW - Peer-to-peer networks
KW - Two-layered blockchain
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U2 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107074
DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107074
M3 - Article
C2 - 37311384
SN - 0010-4825
VL - 163
JO - Computers in Biology and Medicine
JF - Computers in Biology and Medicine
M1 - 107074
ER -