“Secure Data Exchange” in Patent Application Approval Process (USPTO 20230315875): Patent Application

2023 OCT 19 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent application by the inventors Hansen, Adam Wesley (Missouri City, TX, US); Hansen, Christopher Glenn (Provo, UT, US), filed on July 27, 2021, was made available online on October 5, 2023, according to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx correspondents.

This patent application has not been assigned to a company or institution.

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described herein are not prior art to the claims in the present application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.

“All types of data in numerous different fields is being generated throughout the world. Similarly, significant amounts of data are being aggregated and stored in various repositories throughout the world, including those which are commercially or governmentally managed or held. Within a given field, the accumulated data may be used in aggregate by individual repositories for various purposes. For example, in the case of genomic data, private and public repositories are utilized for discovery of disease-gene associations and potential drug targets, identification of candidates for enrollment in clinical trials, and reclassification of variants of uncertain significance (VUS) as pathogenic or benign, amongst other possibilities. The repositories may include genomic sequencing data for millions of individuals worldwide.

“In parallel with the development of these different, and often isolated, data resources, there is often a demand for increased sample size by potential users of the data. Individual repositories can increase their sample size, but eventually their growth will plateau or level off as these repositories saturate in size due to market reach or political boundaries. In addition, data in a single repository may presently be individually queried, but the data in numerous repositories may not be queried together. In the latter instance, the ability to query or analyze data across disparate repositories would allow for greater power and value relative to a corresponding data request of any single repository due to increased sample size and genetic diversity. However, data sharing across repositories is not currently employed due to a number of drawbacks, including for example the common need of maintaining data privacy, whether due to legal obligations (e.g., to protect individual-level data) or business concerns. For example, searching across numerous independent data sources is not possible without compromising privacy by exposing unencrypted data to external parties.

“The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to implementations that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one example technology area where some implementations described herein may be practiced.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent application, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential characteristics of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.

“In one example embodiment, a method includes receiving data from a number of independent data sources. The method further includes storing the data in a central repository where at least a first portion of the data is homomorphically encrypted, receiving a data request from a data requester, and analyzing the stored data without decrypting the homomorphically encrypted data to determine an aggregated subset of data relevant to the data request. The aggregated subset of data may include at least some of the homomorphically encrypted data. The method also includes providing data request results that include or are derived from the aggregated subset of data to the data requester.

“In another embodiment, a system includes one or more processors and one or more non-transitory computer-readable media containing instructions which, in response to being executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to perform or control performance of various operations. The operations include receiving data from a number of independent data sources. The operations further include storing the data in a central repository where at least a first portion of the data is homomorphically encrypted, receiving a data request from a data requester, and analyzing the stored data without decrypting the homomorphically encrypted data to determine an aggregated subset of data relevant to the data request. The aggregated subset of data includes at least some of the homomorphically encrypted data. The operations also include providing data request results that include or are derived from the aggregated subset of data to the data requester.

“In still another embodiment, one or more non-transitory computer-readable media contain instructions which, in response to being executed by one or more processors, cause a system to perform or control performance of operations that include receiving data from a number of independent data sources. The operations further include storing the data in a central repository where at least a portion of the data is homomorphically encrypted, receiving a data request from a data requester, and analyzing the stored data without decrypting the homomorphically encrypted data to determine an aggregated subset of data relevant to the data request. The aggregated subset of data includes at least some of the homomorphically encrypted data. The operations also include providing data request results that include or are derived from the aggregated subset of data to the data requester.

“In still another embodiment, a method includes receiving a data request from a data requester; identifying from the data request received from the data requester one or more types of data for which presence may be determined by a number of independent data sources; providing the identified one or more types of data to the number of independent data sources for determining presence of the identified one or more types of data; receiving from at least one of the number of independent data sources data corresponding to the identified one or more types of data; and aggregating the data received from each of the independent data sources and providing the aggregated data to the data requester.

“Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by the practice of the invention. The features and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and other features of the present invention will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, or may be learned by the practice of the invention as set forth hereinafter.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method, comprising: receiving data from a number of independent data sources; storing the data in a central repository, wherein at least a first portion of the data is homomorphically encrypted; receiving a data request from a data requester; analyzing the stored data without decrypting the homomorphically encrypted data to determine an aggregated subset of data relevant to the data request, the aggregated subset of data comprising at least some of the homomorphically encrypted data; and providing data request results that include or are derived from the aggregated subset of data to the data requester.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the aggregated subset of data includes homomorphically encrypted data received from at least two of the independent data sources.

“3. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a decryption request from the data requester for decryption of the at least some of the homomorphically encrypted data included in the aggregated subset of data.

“4. The method of claim 3, further comprising providing a decryption key from at least one of the independent data sources to the data requester.

“5. The method of claim 4, wherein the aggregated subset of data includes at least some data from the at least one independent data source that has been homomorphically encrypted.

“6. The method of claim 4, wherein the decryption key is a one-time decryption key.

“7. The method of claim 3, further comprising identifying the independent data sources having homomorphically encrypted data in the aggregated subset of data and notifying the identified independent data sources of the data request.

“8. The method of claim 7, further comprising receiving re-encrypted data from the identified independent data sources, the re-encrypted data being re-encrypted with a public encryption key provided by the data requester.

“9. The method of claim 8, wherein the data request results provided to the data requester comprise the re-encrypted data.

“10. The method of claim 8, wherein the data request results provided to the data requester are derived from the re-encrypted data.

“11. The method of claim 1, further comprising running one or more cache queries to identify one or more locations of certain homomorphically encrypted data stored in the central repository and storing the one or more locations.

“12. The method of claim 11, further comprising identifying the one or more locations when the data request from the data requester is the same or similar to the one or more cache queries.

“13. The method of claim 1, wherein at least a second portion of the data received from the number of independent data sources is encrypted.

“14. The method of claim 13, wherein the first portion of the data received from the number of independent data sources has a different sensitivity level than the second portion of the data received from the number of independent data sources.

“15. The method of claim 1, further comprising identifying from the data request received from the data requester one or more types of data to be identified from the stored data and analyzing the stored data to determine if the one or more types of data is included therein.

“16. The method of claim 15, wherein the one or more types of data to be identified from the stored data includes at least one type of genomic data, at least one type of phenotypic data, or a combination of at least one type of genomic data and at least one type of phenotypic data, and analyzing the stored data includes determining if the homomorphically encrypted data includes any instances of the at least one type of genomic data, the at least one type of phenotypic data, or a combination of at least one type of genomic data and at least one type of phenotypic data.

“17. The method of claim 16, wherein the at least one type of genomic data includes a genetic variant.

“18. The method of claim 16, wherein the at least one type of phenotypic data includes one or more of demographic information, electronic health record data and derivatives thereof, medical diagnostic codes, billing codes, terms from computational ontologies, patient-reported data, automatically generated data from health wearables or sensors, family history data, and medical imaging raw data or downstream derivative features thereof.

“19. The method of claim 1, wherein the stored data includes information relating to physical assets for sale.

“20. The method of claim 1, wherein the stored data includes at least one type of phenotypic data, the phenotypic data including one or more of demographic information, electronic health record data and derivatives thereof, medical diagnostic codes, billing codes, terms from computational ontologies, patient-reported data, automatically generated data from health wearables or sensors, family history data, and medical imaging raw data or downstream derivative features thereof.

“21. The method of claim 1, wherein the stored data includes financial information, the financial information including health insurance information, billing information, account balance information, credit information, credit score information, payment information, or any combination of the foregoing.

“22. The method of claim 1, wherein the first portion of the received data is homomorphically encrypted before receipt from the number of independent data sources.

“23. The method of claim 1, wherein the stored data includes at least one type of genomic data.

“24. A system comprising: one or more processors; and one or more non-transitory computer-readable media containing instructions which, in response to being executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to perform or control performance of operations comprising: receiving data from a number of independent data sources; storing the data in a central repository, wherein at least a first portion of the data is homomorphically encrypted; receiving a data request from a data requester; analyzing the stored data without decrypting the homomorphically encrypted data to determine an aggregated subset of data relevant to the data request, the aggregated subset of data comprising at least some of the homomorphically encrypted data; and providing data request results that include or are derived from the aggregated subset of data to the data requester.

“25. The system of claim 24, wherein the stored data includes genomic data, phenotypic data, financial data, information relating to physical assets for sale, or any combination thereof.

“26. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media containing instructions which, in response to being executed by one or more processors, cause a system to perform or control performance of operations comprising: receiving data from a number of independent data sources; storing the data in a central repository, wherein at least a first portion of the data is homomorphically encrypted; receiving a data request from a data requester; analyzing the stored data without decrypting the homomorphically encrypted data to determine an aggregated subset of data relevant to the data request, the aggregated subset of data comprising at least some of the homomorphically encrypted data; and providing data requests results that include or are derived from the aggregated subset of data to the data requester.

“27. A method, comprising: receiving a data request from a data requester; identifying from the data request received from the data requester one or more types of data for which presence may be determined by a number of independent data sources; providing the identified one or more types of data to the number of independent data sources for determining presence of the identified one or more types of data; receiving from at least one of the number of independent data sources data corresponding to the identified one or more types of data; and aggregating the data received from each of the independent data sources and providing the aggregated data to the data requester.

“28. The method of claim 27, wherein the one or more types of data to be identified from the data request includes a genetic variant.

“29. The method of claim 28, wherein the data received from the at least one of the number of independent data sources includes instances of the genetic variant.

“30. The method of claim 27, wherein the one or more types of data include genomic data, phenotypic data, financial data, information relating to physical assets for sale, or any combination thereof.”

URL and more information on this patent application, see: Hansen, Adam Wesley; Hansen, Christopher Glenn. Secure Data Exchange. U.S. Patent Application Number 20230315875, filed July 27, 2021 and posted October 5, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20230315875)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

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