Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for Medical Tests Using Genomic Data

We propose privacy-enhancing technologies for medical tests and personalized medicine methods, which utilize patients’ genomic data. Focusing specifically on a typical disease-susceptibility test, we develop a new architecture (between the patient and the medical unit) and propose a privacy-preserving algorithm by utilizing homomorphic encryption and proxy re-encryption. Assuming the whole genome sequencing is done by a certified institution, we propose to store patients’ genomic data encrypted by their public keys at a Storage and Processing Unit (SPU). The proposed algorithm lets the SPU process the encrypted genomic data for medical tests and personalized medicine methods while preserving the privacy of patients’ genomic data. Furthermore, we implement and show via a complexity analysis the practicality of the proposed scheme.