Deployment of secured healthcare information is a major challenge in a web-based environment. eHealth services are subjected to same security threats as other services. The purpose of blockchain is to provide a structure and security to the organization data. Healthcare data deals with confidential information. The medical records can be well organized and empower their propagation in a secured manner through the usage of blockchain technology. The study throws light on providing security of health services through blockchain technology. The authors have analyzed the various aspects of role of blockchain in healthcare through an extensive literature review. The application of blockchain in COVID-19 has also been analyzed and discussed in the study. Further application of blockchain in Indian healthcare has been highlighted in the paper. The study provides suggestions for strengthening the healthcare system by blending machine learning, artificial intelligence, big data, and IoT with blockchain.

Population-based heuristic optimization methods like differential evolution (DE) depend largely on the generation of the initial population. The initial population not only affects the search for several iterations but often also has an influence on the final solution. The conventional method for generating the initial population is the use of computer-generated pseudo-random numbers, which may not be very effective. In the present study, we have investigated the potential of generating the initial population by integrating the non-linear simplex method of Nelder and Mead with pseudo-random numbers in a DE algorithm. The resulting algorithm named the non-linear simplex DE is tested on a set of 20 benchmark problems with box constraints and two real life problems. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme for generating the random numbers significantly improves the performance of DE in terms of fitness function value, convergence rate and average CPU time.