Interesting PoC for using fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) for DNA analysis.

We saw with 23andMe that storing sensitive data is very risky. Hope this will mature and that there will be more of this. With FHE, services don’t necessarily have to see and store your unencrypted data in order to process them.

https://www.zama.ai/post/build-an-end-to-end-encrypted-23andme-genetic-testing-application-using-concrete-ml-fully-homomorphic-encryption

They have a demo of this now on Huggingface:
https://huggingface.co/spaces/zama-fhe/encrypted_dna

Concept is:
1. Data (e.g. DNA) is encrypted on the client side and sent to a server / service
2. Encrypted data is processed (e.g. DNA analysis, generation of health risk reports etc.) on the server and sent back to the client
3. Results are decrypted on the client side

Would love to see this applied on a commercial scale. The data leak at 23andMe underscores that this is important.

When using services on your sensitive data no longer requires direct access, it should also lower the barrier of entry for new companies in this space, since the trust barriers are lowered if you never hand over your unencrypted data anyway. So another benefit of this tech is that it could ultimately also lead to a more vibrant ecosystem of services that rely on processing personal data.

https://warpcast.com/s5eeo/0xcb591e74