Implementation of Privacy and Security for a Genomic Information System Jaime DELGADO 1 a , Silvia LLORENTE a and Guillem REIG b a Information Modeling and Processing (IMP) group – DMAG, Computer Architecture Dept. (DAC), b inLab, Facultat d’Informàtica de Barcelona (FIB), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC - BarcelonaTECH) Abstract. Genomic information is key for the implementation of real personalized medicine. Nevertheless, access to this kind of information must be controlled because of its high privacy and security requirements. Several genomic information formats exist, although we have started from MPEG-G as it includes metadata and protection mechanisms since its inception and provides a hierarchical structure to organize the information contained. The proposed GIPAMS modular architecture provides a secure and controlled access to genomic information, which may help on improving personalized medicine as described in this paper. Keywords. Genomics, privacy, modular architecture, GIPAMS 1. Introduction Personalized medicine is one of multiple examples of use of genomic information, which is a currently relevant research topic. In this context, genomic information sequencing and processing is gaining momentum. Sequencing price has decreased in the last years and now it is possible to sequence complete human genome for a thousand euros [1]. This is leading to an increase of information, making difficult its storage and management by different organizations. On the other hand, genomic information should be protected from unauthorized access due to its specific characteristics, as it includes sensible information not only from a person but also her relatives. This means that, once the information is leaked, it cannot be revoked, like a certificate, and it is public “forever”. Nevertheless, protection mechanisms currently exist, but they have different limitations, such as being restricted for closed environments or being regulated by Data Access Committees, implying in this case a possible long and tedious process that may slow down reaching research results. In order to provide a possible solution to privacy protection of genomic information, we present in this paper our proposal of a secure modular system, called GIPAMS (Genomic Information Protection And Management System), which defines mechanisms for privacy, protection, storage, search and access to genomic information. A first description of GIPAMS is given in [2]. We have implemented a first version of the 1 Corresponding Author: Jaime Delgado, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain; e-mail: jaime.delgado@upc.edu pHealth 2021 B. Blobel and M. Giacomini (Eds.) © 2021 The authors and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). doi:10.3233/SHTI210609 253