The Institute on Robotics and Information and Communication Technologies (IRTIC) has carried out an impact assessment as part of the activities developed during the first 18 months of the European project CHAIMELEON. The research center has also carried out the first formal verification of the health image repository centralized in the cloud in which the initiative consists, so it has listed the potential impacts and threats that can occur, the possible origins of a misuse of the data and measures to be taken.

CHAIMELEON is a project that will establish an EU-wide structured digital information repository of health imaging data. The repository will be used, among other things, as a controlled open source for experimentation with artificial intelligence in cancer research.

The head of the initiative at the IRTIC, Dr. Ricard Martínez, pointed out that this action "represents a challenge from the point of view of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)". In this sense, the working team will have the opportunity to "show the full potential of the future European Health Data Space and contribute to learn how to implement future regulations," he added.

In this way, the institute has focused on verifying that the system has been designed based on the necessary privacy and security principles, so that research can be conducted with the information available in the infrastructure without undermining the rights of the individuals from whom the medical images have been obtained.

The impact assessment carried out by IRTIC is the phase prior to the processing of personal data, as required by the GDPR.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952172.