Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for Medical Tests Using Genomic Data

1. A method to process genomic data comprising the steps of: associating, by a Certified Institution, a patient identification for a given patient; generating, by the Certified Institution, a pair of asymmetric keys related to said patient comprising a private and a public key; analyzing, by the Certified Institution, an output of a Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) sequencer and preparing an aligned genomic data for said patient comprising approved variants, said approved variants being approved by medical authorities, each approved variant representing a position in the genome and a value representing a nucleotide that varies between individuals; extracting, by the Certified Institution, real and potential variants from said approved variants, said real and potential variants having each a position, said real variants being a subset of the approved variants and being different for each human being, said potential variants being the remaining part of the approved variants; selecting, by the Certified Institution, all or part of the potential variants; analyzing, by the Certified Institution, the correlation between the selected potential variants and a privacy sensitivity of the real variants; selecting, by the Certified Institution, a number of other potential variants, said number being determined according to the previous analysis and a level of privacy required; encrypting, by the Certified Institution, the value of each real variant and selected potential variants with the public key of the patient; storing, by the Certified Institution, the encrypted values with their respective positions and the patient identification into a Storage and Processing Unit; dividing, by the Certified Institution, the private key into at least a first and a second part; storing, by the Certified Institution, the second part of the private key in the Certified Institution or in a patient device; transmitting, by the Certified Institution, the first part of the private key to the Storage and Processing Unit; selecting by a medical unit a personalized clinical test to be carried out and related genetic markers, each marker having a position and a contribution; determining, by the medical unit, the contribution of each marker according to the personalized clinical test selected; receiving, by the Storage and Processing Unit from the medical unit, genetic markers related to the personalized clinical test, the respective contributions of the related genetic markers and the patient identification of the patient; retrieving by the Storage and Processing Unit the encrypted values for said patient matching the position of the related genetic markers; executing by the Storage and Processing Unit a genetic test by using the retrieved values, and the contribution of the respective genetic markers thanks to homomorphic operations; partially decrypting by the Storage and Processing Unit the result of the genetic test using the first part of the private key; sending by the Storage and Processing Unit the decrypted result to the medical unit; whereby the medical unit can use the second part of the private key to obtain the result of the performed personalized clinical test.

2. The method to process genomic data according to claim 1 , further comprising: generating, by the Certified Institution, a dummy variant comprising a dummy position and a dummy value, said dummy position being outside of the overall variant positions of a sequence; encrypting, by the Certified Institution, the positions of the real variants with the symmetric key of the patient; encrypting, by the Certified Institution, the dummy value with the public key of the patient; encrypting, by the Certified Institution, the position of the dummy variant with the symmetric key of the patient; storing, by the Certified Institution, together with the encrypted variants, the dummy variant as well as the encrypted positions and the encrypted dummy position into a Storage and Processing Unit; storing, by the Certified Institution, the position of the dummy variant into the patient device; determining by the Certified Institution a set of positions which are common between the marker's position and the real variant's positions; receiving by the Certified Institution from the medical unit an encrypted set of positions with the symmetric key of said patient, and for the marker's positions not present in the variant's position, dummy positions; sending by the Certified Institution to the Storage and Processing Unit the encrypted marker's positions as well as the patient identification; and retrieving by the Storage and Processing Unit the encrypted values for said patient at these encrypted locations and sending them to the medical unit.