Efficient and Privacy-Preserving Similar Patients Query Scheme Over Outsourced Genomic Data

Over the past decade, genomic data has grown exponentially and is widely used in promising medical and health-related applications, which opens up new opportunities for the field of medicine. Similar patients query (SPQ), which can help physicians formulate an optimal therapy, is one of such popular applications. Despite its popularity, since human genomes are usually highly sensitive, a series of policies have been launched by the government to strictly control its acquisitions and utilization. Thus, how to prevent privacy disclosure becomes of great importance to the flourish of SPQ services. In this article, aiming at the above challenge, we first design a novel genetic BK-tree (GBK-tree) for a genomic database. Then, combined with a random sorting mechanism and some existing encryption techniques, we propose an efficient and privacy-preserving similar patients query scheme over encrypted cloud data, named CASPER. With CASPER, a medical institution can securely outsource its private genomic database to a cloud server, and physicians can request SPQ services from the cloud server while keeping her/his query secret. Detailed security analysis shows that CASPER can preserve privacy in the presence of different threats. Furthermore, extensive performance evaluations demonstrate the high accuracy and efficiency of our proposed scheme.

Automated summary

In the past decade, genomic data has exponentially grown and is widely used in medical and health-related applications, providing new opportunities for the field of medicine. Similar patients query (SPQ) is a popular application that helps physicians formulate optimal therapies. However, ensuring privacy protection becomes crucial for the success of SPQ services due to the sensitive nature of human genomes.