BlockFaaS: Blockchain-enabled Serverless Computing Framework for AI-driven IoT Healthcare Applications

Abstract

With the development of new sensor technologies, Internet of Things (IoT)-based healthcare applications have gained momentum in recent years. However, IoT devices have limited resources, making them incapable of executing large computational operations. To solve this problem, the serverless paradigm, with its advantages such as dynamic scalability and infrastructure management, can be used to support the requirements of IoT-based applications. However, due to the heterogeneous structure of IoT, user trust must also be taken into account when providing this integration. This problem can be overcome by using a Blockchain that guarantees data immutability and ensures that any data generated by the IoT device is not modified. This paper proposes a BlockFaaS framework that supports dynamic scalability and guarantees security and privacy by integrating a serverless platform and Blockchain architecture into latency-sensitive Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based healthcare applications. To do this, we deployed the AIBLOCK framework, which guarantees data immutability in smart healthcare applications, into HealthFaaS, a serverless-based framework for heart disease risk detection. To expand this framework, we used high-performance AI models and a more efficient Blockchain module. We use the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol in all communication channels to ensure privacy within the framework. To validate the proposed framework, we compare its performance with the HealthFaaS and AIBLOCK frameworks. The results show that BlockFaaS outperforms HealthFaaS with an AUC of 4.79% and consumes 162.82 millijoules less energy on the Blockchain module than AIBLOCK. Additionally, the cold start latency value occurring in Google Cloud Platform, the serverless platform into which BlockFaaS is integrated, and the factors affecting this value are examined.