The AVATAR consortium and the four AVATAR-associated joint projects met for a joint consortium meeting in Berlin on August 30th, 2023. The event began with a brief overview of the project by Dr. Eike Dazert, Managing Director of network coordinator medways e.V. Following, Mark Hoffmann (Data in Motion Consulting GmbH) presented the demonstrator concepts planned for the project. Patrick Aichroth from the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology gave the participants an insight into technical data protection and presented metrics that can be used in the AVATAR project to assess the risk of anonymized data.
In addition to the technical development of novel methods for data anonymization, the AVATAR project researches motivations and concerns for data donation among the population in order to provide targeted information on the possibilities of data use and anonymization: "Although data donation is in the interest of the common good, the willingness to donate health data among the population is low," explained Prof. Dr. Felix Wilke (University of Applied Sciences Jena) in his presentation. This is often due to the fact that people are unsure how their data will be used and whether it can be reliably anonymized so that it cannot be traced back. The AVATAR project aims to impart this knowledge via the advanced anonymization procedures and at the same time create incentives to make participation in data donations simple and attractive.
Following, the four associated projects PATH, NEMO, KI-AIM and MEDINYM presented their current research results and highlighted connections to the sub-projects of the main consortium.
An interactive workshop format on the four different AVATAR-relevant topics of broad consent / data donation, software architecture, connection to data rooms and anonymization procedures formed the second part of the event. The results of the in-depth project work were then presented and discussed by the moderators in the overall consortium.
The event was jointly organized by medways e.V. and BioRegio STERN.