Intertrust Solutions
For precision medicine to work, sensitive medical records need to be securely stored where appropriate medical professionals can access them. This is especially true for collaboration between institutions which requires a high level of genomic privacy while allowing users to also interact with sensitive data.
Trusted computing platforms are a necessity for precision medicine to progress even further. Studies show that 96% of genetic variants predicted to cause serious medical conditions are rare. Collaboration and the data driving advanced medical research will produce faster and more accurate results.
More practitioners and researchers are using this powerful tool. Next-generation sequencing makes it possible to sequence large amounts of DNA in the matter of days or a few weeks. Storage is only part of the problem. Computing requirements for acquiring, distributing, and analyzing genomics data are even more demanding.
Most medical treatments are designed for a “one-size-fits-all-approach,” leaving some patients at a loss for special situations that require customized treatment plans.
Precision medicine aims to change this by giving clinicians tools to better understand the complexities of a patient’s health and condition.
Advances in precision medicine have already led to powerful new discoveries and new treatments that are tailored to a person’s genetic makeup, or the genetic profile of a tumor.
Trusted computing platforms are a necessity for precision medicine to progress even further.
Medical mobile apps will be an essential part of the precision medicine ecosystem and must be secured against unauthroized tampering.
This is especially true for collaboration between institutions which require a high level of genomic privacy while allowing users to also interact with sensitive data.
In many cases, genomic data is subject to strict regulations which need to be followed by institutions and their security platforms.
Intertrust has developed a distributed Big Data platform, Genecloud, that provides trusted storage and analysis of genomic data and other health information while allowing collaboration between institutions. With Genecloud, customer data is persistently protected and accessible only by those with demonstrable rights to interact with it. Sophisticated auditing mechanisms guarantee that all accesses are logged to support customer compliance efforts as well as demonstrate that regulatory regimes are followed.
As precision medicine goes forward, sensitive medical information will not only reside in medical databases, it will be handled by medical device applications, smartphone apps and other pieces of software. Like software holding any sort of sensitive data, the software should be protected from attacks by malicious actors trying to expose cryptographic keys or other secrets.
Intertrust has developed a cryptographic certificate issuing authority with it’s product Seacert. Seacert has already been used to issue certificates to millions of IoT devices on the market today and can also be used for medical devices and software.
Protecting Healthcare Software White Paper
For decades medical devices have been standalone instruments that interacted only with the patient or medical provider. The advent of technological innovations including miniaturization, low power computation, and wireless technologies has created a new paradigm in the healthcare industry: the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). These devices can now connect to a variety of systems, networks, and other tools within a healthcare delivery organization, enabling higher quality patient care, streamlined operations and improved cost efficiencies.
