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Using health data - but safely!

Yesterday, 40 participants from science, business and industry came together to discuss the secure use of health data at the AVATAR workshop at the Center for Applied Research in Jena.

In the first half of the workshop, AVATAR partners presented their research results to the audience: Following a project overview by Dr. Eike Dazert (medways e.V.), Prof. Cord Spreckelsen (Jena University Hospital) shed light on the use of synthetic data as a suitable anonymization method for medical image data. Dr. Florian Rasche (Navimatix GmbH) then presented the concept for the architecture of the AVATAR system in his lecture. It takes a “strong crew on board” to successfully implement such a complex technical application.

Two other project partners then presented their use cases:

Dr. Anne-Kathrin Dietel (InfectoGnostics Research Campus Jena) explained how bacteria from patient samples can be analyzed in infection diagnostics using nanopore sequencing (MinION, Oxford Nanopore Technologies) (partners: nanozoo and Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology). At the same time, the technology makes it possible to reduce the contamination of the samples with the DNA of the respective patient in order to minimize the probability of re-identification.

Stefan Wurlitzer from Jen-ophthalmo explained that the anonymization of health data is also a relevant topic for MedTech companies: In order to be allowed to use patients' iris data as demo data for device training, GDPR-compliant consent is required. Synthetic image data, such as that generated in AVATAR, makes this process unnecessary.

Elias Kühnel (Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena) then gave an insight into social science research in AVATAR, presenting the results of a survey on the population's willingness to donate data.

The second part of the event focused on the topic of data trustees and data use. Prof. Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Dirksen (Liebenstein Law - law firm for commercial law) addressed the Data Governance Act in the popular “Ask the Lawyer” format.

Two practical examples in which healthcare data can already be used securely rounded off the lecture program: Rosemarie Hinsch (D-Trust) presented Bundesdruckerei GmbH as a service provider for secure data transmission, while Dr. Kutaiba Saleh (Jena University Hospital) explained how medical data can be managed and used via the data integration centers of the Medical Informatics Initiative (MII). Thank you very much for these exciting insights!