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Science Advances Feb 2024Modern machine learning models toward various tasks with omic data analysis give rise to threats of privacy leakage of patients involved in those datasets. Here, we...
Modern machine learning models toward various tasks with omic data analysis give rise to threats of privacy leakage of patients involved in those datasets. Here, we proposed a secure and privacy-preserving machine learning method (PPML-Omics) by designing a decentralized differential private federated learning algorithm. We applied PPML-Omics to analyze data from three sequencing technologies and addressed the privacy concern in three major tasks of omic data under three representative deep learning models. We examined privacy breaches in depth through privacy attack experiments and demonstrated that PPML-Omics could protect patients' privacy. In each of these applications, PPML-Omics was able to outperform methods of comparison under the same level of privacy guarantee, demonstrating the versatility of the method in simultaneously balancing the privacy-preserving capability and utility in omic data analysis. Furthermore, we gave the theoretical proof of the privacy-preserving capability of PPML-Omics, suggesting the first mathematically guaranteed method with robust and generalizable empirical performance in protecting patients' privacy in omic data.
Topics: Humans; Privacy; Algorithms; Data Analysis; Machine Learning; Technology
PubMed: 38295178
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh8601 -
Australasian Psychiatry : Bulletin of... Apr 2024To update psychiatrists and trainees on the realised risks of electronic health record data breaches. (Review)
Review
OBJECTIVE
To update psychiatrists and trainees on the realised risks of electronic health record data breaches.
METHODS
This is a selective narrative review and commentary regarding electronic health record data breaches.
RESULTS
Recent events such as the Medibank and Australian Clinical Labs data breaches demonstrate the realised risks for electronic health records. If stolen identity data is publicly released, patients and doctors may be subject to blackmail, fraud, identity theft and targeted scams. Medical diagnoses of psychiatric illness and substance use disorder may be released in blackmail attempts.
CONCLUSIONS
Psychiatrists, trainees and their patients need to understand the inevitability of electronic health record data breaches. This understanding should inform a minimised collection of personal information in the health record to avoid exposure of confidential information and identity theft. Governmental regulation of electronic health record privacy and security is needed.
Topics: Humans; Electronic Health Records; Psychiatrists; Australia; Confidentiality; Delivery of Health Care
PubMed: 38285964
DOI: 10.1177/10398562241230816 -
Advances and Challenges in Drone Detection and Classification Techniques: A State-of-the-Art Review.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Dec 2023The fast development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, has brought a unique set of opportunities and challenges to both the civilian and... (Review)
Review
The fast development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, has brought a unique set of opportunities and challenges to both the civilian and military sectors. While drones have proven useful in sectors such as delivery, agriculture, and surveillance, their potential for abuse in illegal airspace invasions, privacy breaches, and security risks has increased the demand for improved detection and classification systems. This state-of-the-art review presents a detailed overview of current improvements in drone detection and classification techniques: highlighting novel strategies used to address the rising concerns about UAV activities. We investigate the threats and challenges faced due to drones' dynamic behavior, size and speed diversity, battery life, etc. Furthermore, we categorize the key detection modalities, including radar, radio frequency (RF), acoustic, and vision-based approaches, and examine their distinct advantages and limitations. The research also discusses the importance of sensor fusion methods and other detection approaches, including wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi), cellular, and Internet of Things (IoT) networks, for improving the accuracy and efficiency of UAV detection and identification.
PubMed: 38202987
DOI: 10.3390/s24010125 -
Blockchain in Healthcare Today 2023Integrating personal health records (PHRs) and electronic health records (EHRs) facilitates the provision of novel services to individuals, researchers, and healthcare...
UNLABELLED
Integrating personal health records (PHRs) and electronic health records (EHRs) facilitates the provision of novel services to individuals, researchers, and healthcare practitioners. Simultaneously, integrating healthcare data leads to complexities arising from the structural and semantic heterogeneity within the data. The subject of healthcare data evokes strong emotions due to concerns surrounding privacy breaches. Blockchain technology is employed to address the issue of patient data privacy in inter-organizational processes, as it facilitates patient data ownership and promotes transparency in its usage. At the same time, blockchain technology creates new challenges for e-healthcare systems, such as data privacy, observability, and online enforceability. This article proposes designing and formalizing automatic conflict resolution techniques in decentralized e-healthcare systems. The present study expounds upon our concepts by employing a running case study centered around preventive and personalized healthcare domains.
PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY
This paper suggests using blockchain technology for privacy concerns in integrating personal health records and electronic health records in decentralized e-healthcare systems. This report focuses on designing automatic conflict resolution techniques to ensure patient data ownership, transparency, and privacy in inter-organizational processes. This paper proposes designing automatic conflict resolution techniques in decentralized e-healthcare systems, which can improve inter-organizational processes in healthcare. Using blockchain technology to integrate personal and electronic health records can ensure patient data ownership and promote transparency in data usage, addressing privacy concerns in healthcare systems. This paper emphasizes the importance of data privacy and protection in healthcare systems, highlighting the need for compliance with laws and regulations. The research results, including the proof-of-concept prototype, can provide practical insights into implementing conflict resolution techniques in decentralized e-healthcare systems.
PubMed: 38187955
DOI: 10.30953/bhty.v6.276 -
PLOS Global Public Health 2024Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) have a disproportionately high incidence of HIV compared to males of the same age in Uganda. AGYW are a priority sub-group for...
Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) have a disproportionately high incidence of HIV compared to males of the same age in Uganda. AGYW are a priority sub-group for daily oral Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), but their adherence has consistently remained low. Short Message Service (SMS) reminders could improve adherence to PrEP in AGYW. However, there is paucity of literature about acceptability of SMS reminders among AGYW using PrEP. We assessed the level of acceptability of SMS reminders as a PrEP adherence support tool and the associated factors, among AGYW in Mukono district, Central Uganda. We consecutively enrolled AGYW using PrEP in Mukono district in a cross sectional study. A structured pre-tested questionnaire was administered to participants by three trained research assistants. Data were analyzed in STATA 17.0; continuous variables were summarized using median and interquartile range (IQR) while categorical variables were summarized using frequencies and percentages. Acceptability of SMS was defined as willingness to accept SMS reminders to support PrEP adherence and was assessed using the seven constructs of the theoretical framework of acceptability. The relationship between the outcome and independent variables was assessed using a modified Poisson regression with robust standard errors. During the month of August 2022, 142 AGYW with median age 22 years (IQR; 18, 24) of whom 80.3% owned a personal mobile phone were assessed. SMS reminders were highly acceptable [90.9%, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) [84.9, 95.0]]. Rural residence was negatively associated with acceptability of SMS reminders (aPR: 0.92, 95% CI (0.84, 0.99)) and having belief that SMS cannot breach individual's privacy (aPR: 1.40, 95% CI (1.07, 1.84)) was positively associated with acceptability of SMS reminders. The acceptability of SMS reminders was high in this sub-population. SMS reminder can be leveraged to support AGYW to adhere to PrEP but should be designed in a way that maintains confidentiality, and supports AGYW living in rural settings.
PubMed: 38165833
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0002492 -
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) Nov 2023With the development of mobile applications, location-based services (LBSs) have been incorporated into people's daily lives and created huge commercial revenues....
With the development of mobile applications, location-based services (LBSs) have been incorporated into people's daily lives and created huge commercial revenues. However, when using these services, people also face the risk of personal privacy breaches due to the release of location and query content. Many existing location privacy protection schemes with centralized architectures assume that anonymous servers are secure and trustworthy. This assumption is difficult to guarantee in real applications. To solve the problem of relying on the security and trustworthiness of anonymous servers, we propose a Geohash-based location privacy protection scheme for snapshot queries. It is named GLPS. On the user side, GLPS uses Geohash encoding technology to convert the user's location coordinates into a string code representing a rectangular geographic area. GLPS uses the code as the privacy location to send check-ins and queries to the anonymous server and to avoid the anonymous server gaining the user's exact location. On the anonymous server side, the scheme takes advantage of Geohash codes' geospatial gridding capabilities and GL-Tree's effective location retrieval performance to generate a -anonymous query set based on user-defined minimum and maximum hidden cells, making it harder for adversaries to pinpoint the user's location. We experimentally tested the performance of GLPS and compared it with three schemes: Casper, GCasper, and DLS. The experimental results and analyses demonstrate that GLPS has a good performance and privacy protection capability, which resolves the reliance on the security and trustworthiness of anonymous servers. It also resists attacks involving background knowledge, regional centers, homogenization, distribution density, and identity association.
PubMed: 38136449
DOI: 10.3390/e25121569 -
Cureus Nov 2023This comprehensive exploration unveils the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within medicine and surgery. Through a meticulous journey, we examine... (Review)
Review
This comprehensive exploration unveils the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within medicine and surgery. Through a meticulous journey, we examine AI's current applications in healthcare, including medical diagnostics, surgical procedures, and advanced therapeutics. Delving into the theoretical foundations of AI, encompassing machine learning, deep learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP), we illuminate the critical underpinnings supporting AI's integration into healthcare. Highlighting the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines, we emphasize how AI augments clinical capabilities without supplanting the irreplaceable human touch in healthcare delivery. Also, we'd like to briefly mention critical findings and takeaways they can expect to encounter in the article. A thoughtful analysis of the economic, societal, and ethical implications of AI's integration into healthcare underscores our commitment to addressing critical issues, such as data privacy, algorithmic transparency, and equitable access to AI-driven healthcare services. As we contemplate the future landscape, we project an exciting vista where more sophisticated AI algorithms and real-time surgical visualizations redefine the boundaries of medical achievement. While acknowledging the limitations of the present research, we shed light on AI's pivotal role in enhancing patient engagement, education, and data security within the burgeoning realm of AI-driven healthcare.
PubMed: 38125253
DOI: 10.7759/cureus.49082 -
Mathematical Biosciences and... Nov 2023In many fields, such as medicine and the computer industry, databases are vital in the process of information sharing. However, databases face the risk of being stolen...
In many fields, such as medicine and the computer industry, databases are vital in the process of information sharing. However, databases face the risk of being stolen or misused, leading to security threats such as copyright disputes and privacy breaches. Reversible watermarking techniques ensure the ownership of shared relational databases, protect the rights of data owners and enable the recovery of original data. However, most of the methods modify the original data to a large extent and cannot achieve a good balance between protection against malicious attacks and data recovery. In this paper, we proposed a robust and reversible database watermarking technique using a hash function to group digital relational databases, setting the data distortion and watermarking capacity of the band weight function, adjusting the weight of the function to determine the watermarking capacity and the level of data distortion, using firefly algorithms (FA) and simulated annealing algorithms (SA) to improve the efficiency of the search for the location of the watermark embedded and, finally, using the differential expansion of the way to embed the watermark. The experimental results prove that the method maintains the data quality and has good robustness against malicious attacks.
PubMed: 38124599
DOI: 10.3934/mbe.2023943 -
Medical Image Analysis Feb 2024Artificial intelligence (AI) has a multitude of applications in cancer research and oncology. However, the training of AI systems is impeded by the limited availability...
Artificial intelligence (AI) has a multitude of applications in cancer research and oncology. However, the training of AI systems is impeded by the limited availability of large datasets due to data protection requirements and other regulatory obstacles. Federated and swarm learning represent possible solutions to this problem by collaboratively training AI models while avoiding data transfer. However, in these decentralized methods, weight updates are still transferred to the aggregation server for merging the models. This leaves the possibility for a breach of data privacy, for example by model inversion or membership inference attacks by untrusted servers. Somewhat-homomorphically-encrypted federated learning (SHEFL) is a solution to this problem because only encrypted weights are transferred, and model updates are performed in the encrypted space. Here, we demonstrate the first successful implementation of SHEFL in a range of clinically relevant tasks in cancer image analysis on multicentric datasets in radiology and histopathology. We show that SHEFL enables the training of AI models which outperform locally trained models and perform on par with models which are centrally trained. In the future, SHEFL can enable multiple institutions to co-train AI models without forsaking data governance and without ever transmitting any decryptable data to untrusted servers.
Topics: Humans; Artificial Intelligence; Learning; Neoplasms; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Radiology
PubMed: 38104402
DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2023.103059 -
Cureus Nov 2023The integration of 5G technology in the healthcare sector is poised to bring about transformative changes, offering numerous advantages such as enhanced telemedicine... (Review)
Review
The integration of 5G technology in the healthcare sector is poised to bring about transformative changes, offering numerous advantages such as enhanced telemedicine services, expedited data transfer for medical records, improved remote surgery capabilities, real-time monitoring and diagnostics, advancements in wearable medical devices, and the potential for precision medicine. However, this technological shift is not without its concerns, including potential health implications related to 5G radiation exposure, heightened cybersecurity risks for medical devices and data systems, potential system failures due to technology dependence, and privacy issues linked to data breaches in healthcare. We are striking a balance between harnessing these benefits and addressing the associated risks. Achieving this equilibrium requires the establishment of a robust regulatory framework, ongoing research into the health impacts of 5G radiation, the implementation of stringent cybersecurity measures, education and training for healthcare professionals, and the development of ethical standards. The future of 5G in the medical field holds immense promise, but success depends on our ability to navigate this evolving landscape while prioritizing patient safety, privacy, and ethical practice.
PubMed: 38098915
DOI: 10.7759/cureus.48767