Smart traceable framework for transportation of transplantable organs using IPFS, iot, and smart contracts

Abstract

Existing organ transportation management systems face significant limitations as they do not allow patients to monitor the condition of the transplantable organ during its transportation from the donor's place to the recipient's venue. This undermines patients' confidence that the organ allotted to them remains uncontaminated, healthy, and unaffected by fluctuations in parameters including temperature, humidity, and the container's vibration, and orientation. Additionally, there is a lack of technology to ensure that the organ container remains securely closed throughout the shipment. Furthermore, the shipment data is often stored in centralized or with third-party systems, which are potentially vulnerable to security risks and single points of failure. These limitations highlight the need for a more secure, transparent, and reliable solution to improve organ transportation safety and data integrity. This paper addresses these challenges by proposing a cost-efficient, decentralized, and transparent framework for managing organ transportation that enhances data security and traceability. The proposed framework integrates Internet of Things sensors within the organ container and connects them to smart contracts via the InterPlanetary File System. The blockchain ensures data security, immutability, and decentralization, while sensors safeguard the organ by providing real-time updates on its condition. The smart contracts generate alerts for issues and notify stakeholders for prompt action. A key contribution of this work is the novel use of IPFS for off-chain data storage, which reduces blockchain storage requirements, Ether consumption, and overall system costs. A comparative analysis with existing IoT, IPFS, and blockchain-based transportation approaches demonstrates that the proposed framework consumes a negligible amount of Ether; approximately, 0.000023004, equivalent to approximately 5.52 INR; for deployment, while ensuring safe, transparent, cost-effective, and traceable organ transportation.

Keywords: Blockchain; InterPlanetary file system; Internet of things; Organ transportation; Smart contracts; Traceability.

Fig. 1

The functioning of IPFS for data storage and retrieval.

Fig. 2

Schematic representation of a standard blockchain.

Fig. 3

Operational procedure of a typical blockchain.

Fig. 4

IoT sensors embedded within organ containers during transportation.

Fig. 5

The process of creating, storing, operating, and executing the smart contracts.

Fig. 6

Comparison of traditional centralized web application and blockchain-based decentralized web application.

Fig. 7

Sequence diagram of a smart traceable framework for organ transportation.

Fig. 8

Architectural overview of the proposed framework.

Fig. 9

Proposed framework workflow.

Fig. 10

Ethereum accounts with their corresponding private keys and a mnemonic phrase.

Fig. 11

Successful deployment of IoT smart contract on Truffle.

Fig. 12

IoT sensors embedded inside organ container.

Fig. 13

Different test cases on sensors and their response on the DApp interface.

Algorithm 1: Storing IoT sensor’s data on IPFS using smart contract after a fixed interval of 5 seconds

Algorithm 2: Retrieving data from IPFS, analyzing for issues, and generating corresponding alerts

Algorithm 3: IoTSmartContract.sol Smart Contract

Fig. 14

Storing sensor-generated data on IPFS at regular intervals.

Fig. 15

Comparison graph of gas consumption.