A Quantum-Resistant Federated Blockchain Framework For Secure Multi-Institutional Healthcare Data Sharing And Clinical Decision Automation

The increasing demand for security and privacy-preserving collaboration among healthcare institutions presents significant challenges in data sharing, consent enforcement, and diagnostic automation, especially considering emerging quantum threats. This paper introduces PQ-FedCare, an innovative federated system architecture that incorporates post-quantum cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, and smart contract–governed diagnostics to facilitate verifiable and privacy-compliant clinical collaboration. The proposed framework supports decentralized identity validation, encrypted consent delegation, and encrypted rule execution across blockchain-connected healthcare nodes. Using CRYSTALS-Kyber and SPHINCS+ for quantum-resistant security and zk-SNARKs for proof generation, PQ-FedCare ensures zero data exposure while enabling real-time, cross-institutional medical decision support. Evaluation on real-world clinical datasets (MIMIC-III, TCGA, and GEO GSE12102) demonstrates superior performance over recent baselines in diagnostic accuracy (94.5%), privacy leakage (0%), and proof verification time (92 ms). Additional stress tests confirm the system’s robustness against missing data and scalability across federated nodes. The findings establish PQ-FedCare as a forward-compatible infrastructure for secure, accountable, and future-proof federated healthcare diagnostics. The proposed work is particularly suited for high-stakes clinical environments demanding transparency, regulatory compliance, and resistance to quantum-era attacks.