Datavant Joins the BU Data Privacy Collaborative

How can we improve healthcare around the world without exposing any private patient information? Slated to launch later this Fall, The Boston University Data Privacy Collaborative is a new initiative of the Hariri Institute for Computing, which aims to tackle problems of this kind. One of its founding members is Datavant, an organization dedicated to connecting healthcare organizations to share health data while protecting the privacy of patients. 

Researchers at the Hariri Institute for Computing have been working on multi-party computing (MPC) approaches to enable the analysis of sensitive data that is typically siloed across multiple institutions. MPC technology doesn’t pass any private information across these silos, making it particularly attractive for use when handling healthcare data. Founding Director of the Hariri Institute Professor Azer Bestavros says that “Our lab has been working on developing multi-party computing techniques for the last five years. The engineers and data scientists at Datavant have been excellent thought partners in bringing this technology out of the lab and into the realm of healthcare data privacy. The Datavant team will further our goal of demonstrating and promoting the responsible use of private data assets in real-world applications for a better society.” Other founding members of the Collaborative include organizations already working with the Institute on research and development projects in that space, including Red Hat and the Honda Research Institute (HRI). 

“The engineers and data scientists at Datavant have been excellent thought partners in bringing this technology out of the lab and into the realm of healthcare data privacy.”
-Azer Bestavros

In a press release announcing Datavant’s participation, Datavant CEO and Co-Founder Travis May said “Protecting data and patient privacy is core to our values as a company, and in the last few years, there has been significant innovation in the technologies available to support these efforts. Our team follows all of these developments closely, and we were particularly impressed with the work of the faculty and researchers at BU. We believe that within five years, most analytics on third-party data will not require that the data leave that party’s environment, and we look forward to working with the BU team and with members of the Collaborative to make that belief a reality for the healthcare system.” 

About the Boston University Data Privacy Collaborative

The Boston University Data Privacy Collaborative is an initiative of the Hariri Institute for Computing that brings together organizations interested in working with Institute researchers on promoting the responsible use of private data assets through the development of open-source platforms and through the deployment of pilots that demonstrate the potential for privacy-preserving technologies, like multiparty computation, to address real-world applications for a better society. Membership in the collaborative is open to public and private institutions.