A Preliminary Exploration of Energy Consumption in Blockchain Applications for Thai Healthcare Networks

摘要

Thailand’s fragmented healthcare information systems limit interoperability, seamless
data exchange, and nationwide analytics. The Thai Health Data Center uses the “43 -files standard” to aggregate hospital data through 13 regional centers before reaching the central database. However, this centralized model struggles with availability and resilience—critical for sensitive, time-critical healthcare data tied to legal and insurance processes. Ensuring data security, accessibility, and protection against loss is vital, especially as expectations for disaster recovery grow amid risks like outages and natural disasters. Blockchain offers a secure and scalable alternative for managing healthcare data. In national systems where trust exists among participants, permissioned blockchain is suitable, providing controlled access,
stronger security, and greater availability. To limit energy use, the proposed design employs Proof of Authority (PoA), a consensus mechanism optimized for trusted environments. Using CloudSim Plus, the study simulates and compares energy consumption between classical and blockchain-based systems. The architecture comprises 23 authorized nodes—including regional health offices, zoning divisions, insurance agencies, and the Ministry of Public Health. Transactions are modeled as cloudlets executed on Dell PowerEdge XR11 servers, with volume estimated via regression from 2018–2023 data at about 75 million monthly transactions. Results show annual energy use of 15,827.62 kWh for classical systems and 29,410.02 kWh
for blockchain, reflecting a 1.86-fold increase due to added resilience and continuity