Open Medical Big Data and Open Consent and Their Impact on Privacy
Jingquan Li · 2017
Next-generation DNA sequencing technologies have increased the speed and reduced the cost of sequencing a human genome. Research organizations like the Personal Genome Project (PGP) put genomic data obtained by whole-genome sequencing in an open database on the Internet to promote studies by many researchers. However, open genome databases pose significant privacy and security issues. The purpose of this paper is to identify the principal privacy and security risks of open medical data and explain how to use technical countermeasures to address the risks. This paper articulates the characteristics of genomic data. It then presents a case study of open medical data and demonstrates how this emerging trend could raise privacy risks. Furthermore, it proposes technical considerations to address the risks. It concludes with a discussion of directions of future research.