TRUST-Med6G: A secure and trustworthy medical data privacy protection mechanism in 6G-IoT

No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Zheng, Wei
Anwlnkom, Tomley
Liu, Ye
Advisors
Issue Date
2025-10-17
Type
Article
Keywords
Medical data privacy , 6G networks , Internet of things , blockchain sharding , trustworthy AI
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Citation
Zheng, W., Anwlnkom, T., & Liu, Y. (2025). TRUST-Med6G: A Secure and Trustworthy Medical Data Privacy Protection Mechanism in 6G-IoT. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 1-1. https://doi.org/10.1109/jiot.2025.3622761
Abstract

The rapid deployment of sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks coupled with the Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized healthcare systems, enabling real-time medical data collection and processing through interconnected medical devices. However, the massive scale of medical data generated by these 6G-IoT healthcare networks raises critical concerns regarding data privacy, security, and trustworthiness. Traditional centralized medical data management systems suffer from single points of failure, privacy breaches, and unauthorized access to sensitive patient information. This paper proposes a novel blockchain-based dynamic sharding framework specifically designed for securing trustworthy medical data in 6G-IoT environments, termed TRUST-Med6G. Our approach employs a two-stage optimization strategy that combines reputation-based medical device authentication with deep reinforcement learning-driven adaptive sharding mechanisms. The first stage utilizes a delegated Byzantine fault tolerance protocol to establish trust among medical IoT devices based on their historical reliability and data authenticity records. The second stage implements a dueling deep Q-network algorithm to dynamically optimize blockchain sharding configurations dynamically, minimizing cross-shard medical data transactions while maximizing system throughput and privacy protection. Experimental evaluation against six baseline methods demonstrates that TRUST-Med6G achieves superior performance across all metrics, reducing cross-shard collaborative medical data transactions by over 50% while maintaining privacy protection effectiveness above 95% for highly sensitive medical information and demonstrating exceptional resilience against malicious devices in 6G-IoT healthcare environments.

Table of Contents
Description
Click on the DOI link to access this article at the publishers website (may not be free).
Publisher
IEEE
Journal
IEEE Internet of Things Journal
Book Title
Series
PubMed ID
ISSN
2327-4662
2372-2541
EISSN