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User-Centric and Privacy-Preserving Cancer Research Platform
Official project record (ANR): https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-20-CYAL-0003
About the project
Cancer registries collect, store and analyse information about tumour diseases so that researchers can evaluate the effectiveness of therapies and identify environmental factors linked to certain cancer types. The data processing architecture of cancer registries in France and Germany was designed decades ago, before current privacy concepts, mobile apps and cloud services existed. Registries in both countries remain largely isolated data silos, and even where they share common data schemes, it is not possible to query more than one registry at a time.
UPCARE joined French and German research expertise to design a cross-border cancer registry query platform. The project combined privacy-preserving computation and pairing-based cryptography with existing data schemas and protocol specifications, aiming to make registry-spanning research possible while keeping patient data protected and under the patient's control.
Project facts
Project acronym
UPCARE
Full title
User-Centric and Privacy-Preserving Cancer Research Platform
Reference
ANR-20-CYAL-0003 (France), BMBF funding code 16KIS1385 (Germany)
Funding call
Franco-German bilateral call on cybersecurity, ANR and BMBF, 2020
Project coordination
EURECOM (French side); Fraunhofer AISEC (German consortium lead)
Start date
1 June 2021
End date
31 May 2024
Duration
36 months
ANR funding
EUR 367,659
Objectives
Allow registry-spanning queries for legitimate cancer researchers across France and Germany.
Keep patients informed and in control, through a novel Attribute-Based Encryption scheme supporting purpose-bound access.
Provide private computing services for anonymised statistical analyses through a public API, combining homomorphic encryption with differential privacy.
Design an architecture that keeps data records inaccessible to the platform itself, so a breach of the query platform does not compromise patient privacy.
Demonstrate that data protection and detailed analytics can be achieved together, without relying solely on data minimisation.
Partners
Organisation Role Country
Fraunhofer AISEC (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Forderung der angewandten Forschung) German consortium lead Germany
EURECOM French project coordinator France
Bundesdruckerei GmbH Partner Germany
Krebsregister Rheinland-Pfalz (IDG, Institut fur Digitale Gesundheitsdaten RLP) Partner, cancer registry Germany
Softeam (Softeam Docaposte) Partner France
Publications and reports
UPCARE: User Privacy-Preserving Cancer Research Platform, SECRYPT 2024, 21st International Conference on Security and Cryptography, Dijon, France
UPCARE Abschlussbericht 2024 (final report, German funder repository, TIB Hannover)
Official links
ANR project record: https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-20-CYAL-0003
List of projects selected under the same call: ANR call results, Franco-German cybersecurity 2020
UPCARE was funded jointly by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the 2020 Franco-German bilateral call on cybersecurity.
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