How can artificial intelligence and decentralized technologies revolutionize healthcare while preserving the privacy of patient data? This question lies at the heart of the DLD25 expert talk between Björn Eskofier (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg) and Intel CTO Greg Lavender, moderated by Jennifer Schenker (The Innovator).
“To fully leverage AI and usher in personalized health care, we need integrated data systems because they’re essential for providing a 360 degree view of patients”, Jennifer Schenker observes in her introductory remarks.
Björn Eskofier details his effort to create an “Internet of Health Data”, which would empower individuals to control their medical information. Currently “rich datasets that are siloed inside their hospital or German health research data center environments”, he observes. “We need to get away from that.”
His solution is a shared ledger – similar to blockchain technology – that will allow patients to share data with researchers in a privacy-preserving way, Eskofier says. “The children of the future”, he promises, “will be born with access to this personal health data space.”
Greg Lavender describes Intel’s hardware-level encryption as a way to secure sensitive data – which is important not just when sharing data but also while processing it.
“How do you protect the data in memory?”, Lavender asks, explaining that “a lot of the cyber attacks that happen today are known as company sophisticated side channel attacks, which attack the fundamental architecture and chip architecture of computing systems.”
Intel’s answer are so-called Trust Domain Extensions in the company’s processors, such as the Xeon line, which secure data in in isolated virtual machines for extra protection of sensitive information.
