EGEE is a project funded by the European Union under contract IST-2003-508833

Risks of being on the Grid: the BioMedical challenge

Yannick Legré

CNRS/IN2P3 – EGEE Biomedical WG

GGF 12, Brussels September 21st 2004

www.eu-egee.org

GGF12, September 21st 2004 - 2

the HealthGrid vision

INDIVIDUALISED HEALTHCAREMOLECULAR MEDECINE

Databases

Association

Modelling

Computation

HealthGRID

Computational recommendation

Public Health

Patient

Tissue, organ

Cell

MoleculePatient

related data

Public Health

Patient

Tissue, organ

Cell

Molecule

S. NøragerY. PaindaveineEuropean CommissionDG-INFSO

In this context "Health" does not involve only clinical practice but covers the whole range of information from molecular level (genetic and proteomic information) over cells and tissues, to the individual and finally the population level (social healthcare).

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Health Grid – Security Needs

Confidentiality Integrity Availability

TraceabilityPhysical Security Access Control

Credit: Syed Naqvi

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Issues related to medical data

• Ubiquitous, Quick and Secure Transfer of Information• Medical Information is:

Multimedia, Large and Increasing in Size. Relevant on the Long-term. Medical Data is Critically Confidential. Legal Regulations at National Level is an added difficulty to the Integration of Large

Repositories of Personal Data. Nearly Impossible to:

• Store all Data Outside the Hospital Borders.• Have plain Access to whole Personal Data.

Difficult to:• Provide Access from the Internet.• Replicate Data (Even Temporally).

• Pervasive Access and Fault Tolerance Medical Healthcare is Performed All Over the Clock, 7 Days a Week. Fault Tolerance to All Other Critical Resources (Water, Light, Heating) is Considered. Difficult to:

• Guarantee an ‘Always on’ Application.• Guarantee a Quality of Service.

Credit: Ignacio Blanquer

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Risks

• No respect of data privacy policies GRID Nodes Should be Installed Within Medical Data Networks. Data Should be Stored Encrypted. Information that Flows Across the GRID Should be Filtered to Show Only the

Relevant and Authorized Data. Consider the Legal Issues of European and National Directives. Confidentiality, Integrity, Authorization and Authentication are Provided by the GRID.

• Lack of Robustness Fault Tolerant and Pervasive. High degree of Repeatability in the Results.

• Failure in protecting peoples’ privacy can have devastating consequences on business (e.g. public opinion, lawsuits)

• Health related information is very sensitive and prone to abuse Privacy impacts society as a whole (e.g. loan applications, insurance, scholarship, ...)

• Privacy violation is irreversible Confidential information can never be considered confidential again, once it was out

in the open

• Legal Violation Different regulation for different countries…

Credit: Ignacio Blanquer

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Ongoing work on biomedical requirements in Europe…

• Within the framework of EGEE, biomedical security requirements described in (http://egee-na4.ct.infn.it/requirements/)

• HealthGrid white paper publicly available on HealthGrid web site since June 15th, 2004 (http://www.healthgrid.org) Chapter 8 dedicated to Privacy, Security and Ethical issues Chapter 9 dedicated to Legal issues

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The HealthGrid initiative

• To provide a place of dialog and exchange between European and international projects Web site: www.healthgrid.org

• To produce collaborative documents HealthGrid White Paper

• To organize conferences and workshops on Health grids

Third European HealthGrid Conference

Location : Oxford (UK)

Dates: April 7th – 10th 2005

Information and registration (available soon): http://oxford2005.healthgrid.org