wordpress blog stats
Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

‘Digital mask’ technology: Can anonymising facial data protect patients’ privacy?

Nature.com published a study that claims that Digital mask (DM) technology can help protect facial data amid rise in health tech and telemedicine

hand with mobile face scan man vector illustration

What’s the news?  Researchers have developed a technology called the digital mask (DM) to anonymise facial data of patients by erasing “identifiable features while retaining disease-relevant features relevant for diagnosis,” a paper published on Nature.com says.  Further, the authors claim that the resultant anonymised data has the ability to even “evade recognition systems using artificial intelligence-powered re-identification algorithms.”  Why it matters: India’s mission to digitise healthcare records and the rising adoption of telemedicine involves large scale collection of data. Storing facial images in medical records poses privacy risks due to the sensitive nature of personal biometric information that can be extracted from such images, the paper says. Privacy protection is important especially in context of data hacking and data leaking incidents. In the first half of 2022 alone, over 20 million health records were breached in the US. Moreover, India is on its way to draft guidelines on anonymisation of data and this paper's digital mask technology may be of interest to policymakers.  How the technology works: The digital mask inputs an original video of the patient's face and outputs a de-identified three dimensional (3D) reconstructed video based on complimentary use of deep learning and 3D reconstruction.  Deep learning helps in extracting parts of facial features 3D reconstruction automatically digitises the shapes and motions of 3D faces, eyelids and eyeballs based on the extracted facial features Have a look at the image below to get a better understanding of how the anonymised facial representation looks like:  Courtesy: nature.com To develop…

Please subscribe/login to read the full story.
Written By

I cover privacy, surveillance and tech policy. In my reporting, I try my best to present the most relevant facts, and sometimes add in a pinch of my thoughts.

MediaNama’s mission is to help build a digital ecosystem which is open, fair, global and competitive.

Views

News

Amazon announced that it will integrate its logistics network and SmartCommerce services with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

News

India's smartphone operating system BharOS has received much buzz in the media lately, but does it really merit this attention?

News

After using the Mapples app as his default navigation app for a week, Sarvesh draws a comparison between Google Maps and Mapples

News

In the case of the ‘deemed consent' provision in the draft data protection law, brevity comes at the cost of clarity and user protection

News

The regulatory ambivalence around an instrument so essential to facilitate data exchange – the CM framework – is disconcerting for several reasons.

You May Also Like

News

Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...

Advert

135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...

News

By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...

News

Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...

MediaNama is the premier source of information and analysis on Technology Policy in India. More about MediaNama, and contact information, here.

© 2008-2021 Mixed Bag Media Pvt. Ltd. Developed By PixelVJ

Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Name:*
Your email address:*
*
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

© 2008-2021 Mixed Bag Media Pvt. Ltd. Developed By PixelVJ