Health Ethics and Policy Laboratory, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Feb 25;23(2):e25120. doi: 10.2196/25120.
Multisite medical data sharing is critical in modern clinical practice and medical research. The challenge is to conduct data sharing that preserves individual privacy and data utility. The shortcomings of traditional privacy-enhancing technologies mean that institutions rely upon bespoke data sharing contracts. The lengthy process and administration induced by these contracts increases the inefficiency of data sharing and may disincentivize important clinical treatment and medical research. This paper provides a synthesis between 2 novel advanced privacy-enhancing technologies-homomorphic encryption and secure multiparty computation (defined together as multiparty homomorphic encryption). These privacy-enhancing technologies provide a mathematical guarantee of privacy, with multiparty homomorphic encryption providing a performance advantage over separately using homomorphic encryption or secure multiparty computation. We argue multiparty homomorphic encryption fulfills legal requirements for medical data sharing under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation which has set a global benchmark for data protection. Specifically, the data processed and shared using multiparty homomorphic encryption can be considered anonymized data. We explain how multiparty homomorphic encryption can reduce the reliance upon customized contractual measures between institutions. The proposed approach can accelerate the pace of medical research while offering additional incentives for health care and research institutes to employ common data interoperability standards.
多站点医学数据共享在现代临床实践和医学研究中至关重要。挑战在于进行既能保护个人隐私又能保证数据效用的数据共享。传统的隐私增强技术的缺点意味着机构依赖于定制的数据共享合同。这些合同冗长的流程和管理增加了数据共享的低效率，并可能抑制重要的临床治疗和医学研究。本文综合了两种新型的先进隐私增强技术——同态加密和安全多方计算（统称为多方同态加密）。这些隐私增强技术为隐私提供了数学保证，多方同态加密在性能上优于分别使用同态加密或安全多方计算。我们认为，多方同态加密满足了欧盟《通用数据保护条例》（GDPR）对医疗数据共享的法律要求，为数据保护设定了全球基准。具体来说，使用多方同态加密处理和共享的数据可以被视为匿名数据。我们解释了多方同态加密如何减少机构之间对定制合同措施的依赖。所提出的方法可以加快医学研究的步伐，同时为医疗保健和研究机构采用通用数据互操作性标准提供额外激励。
