AVATAR-Transfer – Anonymization of personal health data by generating digital avatars for the transfer to applications in medicine and care

Securely using sensitive health data – with digital avatars

Health data forms an essential basis for advances in diagnostics, for personalized therapies, and for the development of innovative medical devices. At the same time, it is among the most sensitive types of personal data, the processing of which imposes the highest requirements on privacy and data security.

From Research to Application

The AVATAR-Transfer project aims to develop innovative concepts, methods, and solutions for the secure collection, provision, and processing of health data. It builds on the approaches developed in the predecessor project AVATAR and further develops and implements the AVATAR platform for efficient secondary data use in research and development.

The focus is on the use of modern anonymization and data protection procedures to make sensitive health data usable in compliance with data protection regulations. The developed solutions are accompanied by legal, ethical, and social science analyses to ensure sustainable and socially acceptable use.

Through close collaboration between research institutions, clinics, and companies, the project makes a long-term contribution to improving patient health and strengthening data-driven innovations in healthcare.

Innovative Application Scenarios for Health Data

The new project focuses on various application areas in which solutions for the anonymization and privacy-preserving use of sensitive health data are to be further developed and tested.

• Predicting treatment outcomes in hearing health through secure federated learning
• Optimization of ophthalmological rehabilitation services and user training for devices based on anonymized patient data.
• Use and statistical analysis of anonymized health data to fulfill post-market surveillance requirements for approved medical devices
• Ensuring the anonymity of clinical biosignal data and researching the re-identifiability of non-anonymized data from consumer devices
• Anonymization of human genomic data already during sequencing

In the AVATAR-Transfer project, Fraunhofer IDMT is developing core technologies for the privacy-preserving handling of sensitive health data. The focus is on combining innovative anonymization methods with modern privacy-enhancing technologies. These are supplemented by analyses of potential re-identification risks and by methods for the automated selection of suitable evaluation approaches.

The work takes into account various types of health data, including biosignals. Modern methods such as differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, and secure federated learning are employed.

In addition, Fraunhofer IDMT investigates and tests methods for incentivizing data contributions. Furthermore, specialized solutions for post-market surveillance and methods for watermarking EEG data are being developed. All work is accompanied by a legal assessment of the developed components within the existing legal framework (in particular the GDPR and the German Data Protection Act). 

Coordinators and Spokespersons

• InfectoGnostics Forschungscampus Jena e.V.
• Navimatix GmbH

Consortium

• medways e.V.
• University Hospital Jena
• Fraunhofer IDMT
• Fraunhofer IOSB-AST
• DLR Institute for Data Sciences
• Ilmenau University of Technology
• Ernst-Abbe-Hochschule Jena
• Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena
• Friedrich Schiller University of Jena
• Liebenstein Law Kanzlei für Wirtschaftsrecht
• ISMA AG
• Audoora GmbH
• SRH Wald-Klinikum Gera GmbH
• eemagine Medical Imaging Solutions GmbH
•  JEN-OPHTHALMO
• Data in Motion Consulting GmbH (associated partner)