From the start, the ClimAIr project has made protecting sensitive information a top priority. It brings together climate data, air quality details, and medical records to help researchers see how the environment affects health. But merging these different datasets also creates real challenges for privacy and data security.
According to Gökay GÖK, Deputy General Manager of KEYDATA, a partner in the ClimAIr project, the system’s guiding principle is clear: “medical data must never leave the healthcare providers.” This principle shapes the entire technical architecture of the project, determining where data is stored, how AI models are trained, and how partners collaborate.
Within ClimAIr, KEYDATA is responsible for building the secure AI infrastructure that allows nine medical partners to collaborate while keeping sensitive information inside each institution. As Gökay explains, “our mission is to create a common, interoperable layer on top of these systems while keeping all sensitive data exactly where it belongs.”
To make this possible, the project uses a privacy-preserving architecture based on federated learning. In this approach, each hospital trains its own AI model locally using its own data. Only the model parameters are shared and combined to create a stronger model, while patient records remain inside the hospital. As Gökay summarizes, “you train the model locally, keep all sensitive and demographic data inside the hospital, and only share model parameters.”
At the same time, the project faces important technical challenges. ClimAIr must harmonize clinical, environmental, and climate datasets that differ significantly in structure, scale, and resolution. Bringing these datasets together in a unified model that supports AI training is, as Gökay notes, “probably one of the most demanding parts of the project.”
By combining privacy-preserving AI with harmonized data from health, environmental, and climate domains, ClimAIr aims to build a system that generates insights for researchers, clinicians, and policymakers.
Read the full article to discover how ClimAIr is developing a secure AI infrastructure that enables collaboration while protecting sensitive health data:
Building Trust by Design: The Secure AI Infrastructure Behind ClimAIr