Our team from Germany, Italy, and Estonia has completed a showcase on data security and patient privacy in the particularly demanding setting of international clinical cancer research.
The goal of the Federated Secure Computing project funded by Stifterverband is to enable digital collaboration while maintaining the highest level of data protection in terms with national and European regulation.
We solve this problem by moving the joint computation to a secure peer-to-peer network. Access to the network and data flow is controlled by Federated Secure Computing, a free and open source middleware developed for Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München by bytes for life. Secure Multiparty Computation is provided through Sharemind MPC, an industry-grade cryptography backend by Cybernetica. In this way, no actual patient data is ever shared between institutions, only the aggregate result of the computation is revealed to the participating university hospitals.
In the clinical study, patient data from LMU Klinikum München and Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS was jointly evaluated to improve effectiveness and safety of MR guided radiotherapy for adrenal gland metastases.
The paper contains a full blueprint including details on architecture, software, and technical and administrative data protection measures:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-024-01293-4
A more comprehensive news item with quotes from the participating researchers and institutions is found here:
#privacy #GDPR #cryptography #clinicalstudy #research