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AVATAR network meeting in Berlin
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The AVATAR consortium and the four joint projects KI-AIM, MEDINYM, NEMO and PATH met on August 21 for this year's annual conference in Berlin. In the first part of the event, all five projects introduced themselves to the audience with short presentations.
Following, AVATAR partners gave insights into their research topics: Thomas Jochmann (TU Ilmenau) showed in his presentation that EEG data contains person-specific signals: For example, the heartbeat, which is visible as a signal in an EEG, can contain information about gender. Overall, these personal characteristics can be sufficient to re-identify a patient. The aim of AVATAR is to remove these characteristics using suitable anonymization methods in order to make the data available for medical research.
In his presentation, Prof. Dr. Cord Spreckelsen (UKJ) presented data synthesis as suitable method to anonymize health data. A statistical procedure generates new data sets by reproducing the distribution of real data. The synthetic image data generated in this way can be used for teaching purposes, for example.
In the following lecture, Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Dirksen (Liebenstein Law) spoke about the latest legal developments in the field of data protection and presented the Health Data Usage Act (GDNG). Finally, Dr. Sven Bock (DLR) presented the results of a study in which the general public was asked about the donation of anonymized health data. The study shows that trust depends heavily on the user of the data (e.g. doctors, researchers, industry and technology companies). If data donors benefit from the data donation, they prefer to pass on their data.
In interactive workshops, the participants gained insights into various areas of work of AVATAR partners - from the anonymization of EEG data to the definition and use of data spaces and the FHIR data standard, which simplifies the exchange of data in the healthcare sector. In addition, participants were able to delve into the world of data protection and study the contents of the European Health Data Spaces (EHDS) legal text in groups (workshop organized by Liebenstein Law). In another session, Christian Döring (InfectoGnostics research campus) discussed the importance and function of science communication and gave practical tips on communicating scientific content - ‘Keep it smart and simple!’
Three poster sessions provided an opportunity for in-depth discussions and networking with project partners and guests.