Secure-by-Design IoMT Networks: A Quantum-Blockchain and AI Framework for 6G Healthcare

Abstract

This paper proposes the Quantum-Blockchain Secured Framework (QBSF), a novel secure-by-design architecture for the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in next-generation 6G healthcare systems. QBSF integrates Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) for post-quantum secure communication, blockchain technology for decentralized trust management and tamper-proof auditing, and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) for real-time anomaly detection and adaptive security control. A federated artificial intelligence (AI) approach ensures privacy-preserving intelligence across distributed edge medical devices. Unlike existing approaches that address these components in isolation, QBSF provides an integrated, end-to-end security solution tailored to the dynamic and resource-constrained nature of medical cyber-physical systems (CPS). Simulation results demonstrate that QBSF significantly outperforms traditional 5 G-based healthcare security architectures, achieving a 137.5% improvement in overall security score, a 100% increase in blockchain trust index, and an 80% reduction in attack-related error rate. These findings underscore the potential of QBSF to support secure, scalable, and quantum-resilient medical infrastructures powered by AI.