Secure data sharing in healthcare with complete privacy

Digital healthcare seems full of promise. Like a coaching app developed by a hospital and that uniquely supports a patient group with irritable bowel syndrome. Patients can use the app to enter values, how much they sleep, what they eat and how they feel afterwards. On this basis, they receive tips, the nurse can keep an eye on things, they can exchange messages with the doctor via the app and call the nurse.

It is essential to monitor the app to see whether it really boosts health? It could create a ‘waterbed effect’: less care in the hospital, but more visits to the doctor, use of medication or other healthcare applications. And the app needs to be updated on the basis of good analyses.

The sharing of data between hospitals and health insurance companies would enable effectiveness analyses to be done. Adding socio-demographic and socio-economic data can then determine whether the app is equally well accepted by each group and possibly produces differing effects. However, data sharing between different parties is not a given; privacy must be safeguarded optimally along with maximum data security. TNO has developed the Care for Data innovation to this end.

Multi Party Computation 

Care for Data is based on MPC, or Secure Multi-Party Computation in full. Cryptographic technologies allow multiple parties to analyse data together and draw conclusions without these parties ever being able to see each other’s data. This innovation came about in a collaboration with the healthcare insurance company CZ, the Zuyderland Hospital and CBS within Techruption, the field lab allied to the Brightlands Smart Services Campus in Heerlen.

Further development of this technology is necessary in order to test the efficiency of innovations in healthcare while fully maintaining privacy. The next step for the Care for Data innovation is to take validation of this platform a step further. So TNO is looking for parties from the healthcare sector who, together with us and our partners, are keen to test this innovative platform in various healthcare domains.