The AnoSiDat congress - Anonymization for secure data use - brought together for the first time all five BMBF-funded networks and their 17 associated projects working on the anonymization of health, mobility and geospatial reference data. In addition to the expert presentations, the program was supplemented by a panel discussion with representatives from politics, business, science and a speaker from the Chaos Computer Club.
Numerous AVATAR researchers actively participated in the program with a wide range of content: Following the project presentation by network coordinator Dr. Eike Dazert (medways e.V.), Prof. Felix Wilke (Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena) provided insights into a representative study survey investigating the willingness of the population to donate medical data for research purposes. According to this, Wilke emphasized that trust is an important key factor for data donation. Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Dirksen (LIEBENSTEIN LAW - law firm for commercial law), who provides legal expertise and advice to the AVATAR sub-projects, then discussed the legal perspectives and challenges of donating health data for research in the project's tried-and-tested "Legal Consultation Hour" format.
Dr. Anne-Kathrin Dietel (InfectoGnostics) summarized all AVATAR contributions in a pitch presentation at the beginning of the second day. Dr. Florian Rasche (Navimatix GmbH) then gave an overview of the technical implementation of the AVATAR system infrastructure. Poster contributions on the incentives for data donation (Dr. Sven Bock, German Aerospace Center), the four AVATAR use cases (Anne-Kathrin Dietel), as well as the AVATAR labs currently being set up for internal project work and the presentation of project results (ITnet Thüringen e.V.) rounded off the program.
Both congress days offered numerous opportunities to discuss the technical possibilities and challenges of anonymizing personal data. We are delighted about the many new cross-network contacts and the reunion with our partners from the four associated research projects PATH, MEDINYM, NEMO and KI-AIM, who also presented themselves to the audience with lectures and posters.