Introduction
The challenge of secure healthcare data exchange continues to grow as organisations increasingly look towards data-driven insights while simultaneously complying with strict data privacy policies. The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has launched the Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) Sandbox to provide a safe space for companies to experiment with PETs, while gaining understanding of regulatory and technical boundaries in real-world applications. The PETs Sandbox plays an integral role in enabling protected data exchanges across industries, such as healthcare.
As the first use case under the PETs Sandbox, a global pharmaceutical company’s Digital Health Exchange (DHEX) was designed to facilitate data sharing among hospitals, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies. Fortanix, an IMDA-accredited company, provides support via Confidential Computing technology, ensuring data remains secure even while being processed.
IMDA’s accreditation framework allows companies seeking to revolutionise the digital landscape to gain credibility and access enterprise and government opportunities. It is companies like Fortanix that exemplifies Singapore’s commitment to building trusted and secure digital solutions.
The Importance of Secure Healthcare Data Exchange
The global healthcare sector is undergoing a digital transformation, embracing data-driven decision-making, AI-powered diagnostics, and research collaboration. However, privacy concerns, regulatory restrictions, and cybersecurity risks make data-sharing complex.
Regulatory barriers further complicate secure data exchange. Data breaches and unauthorised access to sensitive patient information pose serious risks, as highlighted in IMDA PDPA Regulations. Organisations must comply with strict international standards, including PDPA, GDPR, and HIPAA. Furthermore, concerns surrounding cloud-based data sharing due to security vulnerabilities have resulted in hesitation among healthcare institutions in adopting new data-sharing solutions.
Digital Health Exchange (DHEX) – Facilitating Privacy-First Collaboration
DHEX was developed to solve the problem of secure healthcare data exchange while ensuring regulatory compliance. It prioritises patient privacy, enabling hospitals, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies to collaborate on healthcare innovations.
DHEX ensures that data is encrypted at every stage, maintaining security even while being processed and exchanged. It aligns to Singapore’s PDPA and international privacy laws. With the integration of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs), it enables healthcare institutions to collaborate while safeguarding sensitive information.
Securing Data in Use– Fortanix’s Confidential Computing
Fortanix utilises Confidential Computing to address this gap by ensuring that even while data is being processed, it remains encrypted and inaccessible to unauthorised parties.
Data exists in three states: at rest, in transit, and in use. Traditional encryption addressed data at rest and data in transit. But that left data in use vulnerable to attack. Confidential Computing solves this problem by retaining data encrypted even at runtime in memory. This is achieved through secure enclaves—hardware-based isolated environments called Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), a type of PETs, within the CPU—that allows encrypted data to be processed without exposing it to anyone. This ensures even the operating system or cloud provider cannot access the data, protecting it even if the infrastructure is compromised.
Anand Kashyap
CEO of Fortanix
The Impact: How DHEX and Fortanix Are Reshaping Data Sharing in Healthcare
The collaboration between DHEX and Fortanix represents a significant advancement in privacy-first healthcare data exchange. A major benefit of this partnership is the ability to unlock AI-driven healthcare insights without compromising sensitive patient information. With data security embedded at every stage, healthcare providers and researchers can now securely collaborate, generating new insights that improve patient care. This level of trust and security is vital for driving medical advancements in drug discovery and clinical trials, where large datasets are critical for research and innovation.
Healthcare organisations around the world can benefit from sharing data among healthcare providers, specialists, and researchers, promoting collaboration and knowledge sharing. However, this must be done without compromising patient privacy and while ensuring compliance with regulations protecting sensitive patient data. Fortanix facilitates secure data sharing while ensuring confidentiality through Confidential Computing, enabling better healthcare outcomes.
Anand Kashyap
CEO of Fortanix
Together, DHEX and Fortanix are setting a new industry benchmark for secure digital ecosystems.
Conclusion: The Future of Secure Data Exchange in Healthcare
As privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) continue to develop, solutions like DHEX are paving the way for future secure digital ecosystems.
DHEX and Fortanix showcase how PETs make data sharing in healthcare both safe and compliant. Beyond healthcare, these technologies hold promise for transforming other sectors such as finance, government, and AI analytics.
DHEX aims to expand internationally, continuing to leverage Confidential Computing to protect sensitive data during processing across various applications.
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