Blockchain Framework for Cognitive Sensor Network Using Non-Cooperative Game Theory

The incorporation of technology in healthcare and hospital management has given a new perception to the medical procedures, and drug management for patient-centric care. Emerging technologies like blockchain, Internet of Things, and cognitive computing are most adaptable for designing smart healthcare systems. However, due to the diversified tasks involved, a design approach with broader understanding involving multiple factors that represent each area of the healthcare is the need of the hour. Game theory has gained prominence in modeling multi-player problems designated by strategic interdependency. This paper proposes a non-cooperative game strategy between players (stakeholders) to inspect how rationality is exhibited among the players who seamlessly try to get benefitted from the actions of other players. To evaluate the feasibility of the proposed model, a prototype was designed based on Ethereum permissioned blockchain employing Raspberry pi IoT devices and sensor-based cognition. Use of blockchain brings in trust, security and transparency to the system. The simulation results show that the proposed model provides better outcomes in terms of latency (
$\approx 15~\text {min}$
), throughput and scalability with an increased number of transactions. The comparative analysis elucidates the fact that the proposed method outperforms the existing healthcare systems with a significant improvement of 10-15% in terms of resource utilization and provides faster and accurate patient-centric services.