National Sun Yat-sen University /  Distinguished Professor Jun-Yi Fan

 Pain Points Solved 

1. Issues Solved: 

• Current medical data exchange system is closed and difficult to open for application. Although Taiwan's hospitals have digitized electronic medical records (EMRs) and comply with the EMR exchange center standards, data can only be exchanged within the NHI (National Health Insurance) dedicated network. This closed system makes medical data difficult to share and utilize with external research institutions, AI medical applications, or cross-hospital analysis platforms. 
• Lack of secure cloud adoption mechanism prevents external utilization of medical data. The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) aims to promote smart and precision medicine, which requires large amounts of medical data to be uploaded to the cloud for analysis. Currently, there is no technical architecture that balances cloud convenience with privacy and security, making medical institutions and research units hesitant to store or process medical records in a cloud environment. 
• Existing EMR standards have privacy and security concerns. Even operating within the NHI dedicated network, existing exchange standards may still face the risk of unauthorized access or identification of medical record content. There is a lack of support for aspects such as "post-data-use privacy protection," "cross-hospital identity anonymization," and "access control". 

2. Value and Contribution: 

• Establishes a medical data standard and architecture that can be securely migrated to the cloud. This project redesigns the Electronic Health Record (EHR) structure, centered on the international standard FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), and incorporates privacy protection and encryption mechanisms to achieve secure storage and transmission of medical data in a public cloud environment. 
• Achieves an innovative balance between "data openness" and "privacy protection". It integrates technologies from both the cybersecurity and medical fields (such as searchable encryption, access control, and anonymization) to enable secure sharing, searching, and analysis of data, thereby promoting the development of medical AI, precision medicine, and remote care applications.
• Serves as key infrastructure for the development of smart and precision medicine. Through a cloud-based and standardized data system, medical institutions can more efficiently integrate cross-hospital and cross-system medical record data, improving the accuracy of clinical decision-making, research analysis, and public health policies. 
• Supports collaboration among industry, academia, and research, and upgrades the medical industry. This technology allows academic, industrial, and medical institutions to share data resources under the premise of compliance, fostering industry-academia collaboration, the creation of AI training datasets, and the formation of a medical innovation ecosystem.

 Technology Introduction 

This technology is a Medical Data Warehouse System platform with privacy-preserving and secure data mining. It is fundamentally built upon privacy-preserving Electronic Health Records, PPFHIR (Privacy-Preserving FHIR), which involves the design of an attribute-based encryption access control mechanism and medical data coding/data structure design. The platform establishes the core components: the PPFHIR server and database (public cloud), the HIS server and database (private cloud), a registration server, the PPFHIR API, encryption/decryption and signature APIs applicable to PPFHIR, and a search engine. The overall technical platform is based on privacy-preserving data, starts with medical big data and its applications, and utilizes the PPFHIR privacy-preserving medical data structure to design mechanisms that protect medical "data mining and disclosure" (privacy-preserving medical data mining and data open mechanism) and "collection and application" (privacy-preserving personal electronic health record platform). Every stage operates under privacy protection.

▲Caption: Integrating four sub-technologies, the system achieves a multi-faceted privacy-preserving system that covers medical data collection, warehousing, mining, disclosure, and application, constructing a Medical Data Warehouse System with Privacy-Preserving and Secure Data Mining. This platform is based on a containerized architecture and uses containerization technology to build a sandbox environment for testing by various medical institutions, national organizations, and medical cybersecurity-related organizations and enterprises, including stress testing and security checks. It provides a medical data warehouse system based on encrypted data, ensuring patient privacy even under actual analysis and other applications. In the future, the platform will continue to expand to various types of data, achieving the Internet of Everything and creating a more comprehensive and secure healthcare system through interactive analysis.

 Application Examples 

Using the health watch and platform developed by Horen Technology Co., Ltd., the FHIR general data conversion tool is applied to convert the physiological measurement data produced by its smart watch into FHIR data, which is then uploaded to the project's FHIR server. Horen's Docter smart watch is a multi-functional smart wearable device with physiological data measurement capabilities, capable of 24-hour monitoring of multiple physiological parameters such as pulse, body temperature, blood oxygen saturation, and heart rate, and includes analysis functions for sleep and stress index. After connecting the watch to the manufacturer's self-developed APP, the physiological data is transmitted back to the server via the APP for computation, analysis, and data management.

 Related Links 

None

 Patent Name and Number 

None

 Industry-Academia / Tech Transfer Partner 

Industry-Academia Cooperation: Sitatech Information Services Co., Ltd.、霍恩實業有限公司、KSVGH O.E、KSVGH Orthopedics

 Honors and Awards  

National Innovation Award、Future Tech Award

 Technical Contact  

Industrial Liaison Office

National Sun Yat-sen University
Tel: +886 7-5250165
Email: gloria@mail.nsysu.edu.tw