Portfolio

Frameworks

Assessment of social acceptance of technology

Our SAT Model - Social Acceptance of Technology was developed to assess the social acceptance of disruptive technology and includes

The conceptual framework that considers ethical, technical, social and regulatory perspectives
The quantitative and qualitative methods and tools to perform the assessment
The approach to stakeholder engagement

Assessment of the ethical and legal impacts of Artificial Intelligence

Our ETHAI Model - Ethics of Artificial Intelligence {...} is an example of an Ethical Decision Making model that, within studies and research, aims to ensure that system design produces ethically valid results, to help those who will have to make decisions based on system output to consider all elements that might influence their decision, and to enable use by non-specialists (such as patients involved in the decision-making process of a clinical trial) by allowing them access to a whole set of data and reports that make it understandable to them why the system has provided a specific output.

Assessment of the ethical-legal impacts of technology

Our Regulatory and Ethics-by-Conception model is the framework for ensuring that technology development complies with ethics, security and data protection principles and regulations.

Assessment of Medical Device compliance for CE marking

Our methodology defines the steps for analysing the status of medical devices in relation to the new European Regulation (MDR); the objective of the assessment in which the methodology is applied is the obtaining of CE certification for medical devices for manufacturers by Notified Bodies.

Technologies

SmaC - Smart Consent

We have designed a software for the management and control of personal data consent through smart contracts, blockchain technology and graphic icons. All functionalities necessary for the complete management of informed consent (Grant, Revoke, and View) are developed and included in the software. It provides smart contracts written in Solidity language and developed using the Truffle framework. The invocation of smart contracts is managed via the Web3 package in JavaScript. The software provides an innovative way of managing informed consent, through the combination of new technologies (blockchain and smart contracts) and an advanced user experience implemented with informed consent icons, because the consent can be difficult for users to understand. With this tool, the entire process is simplified and made more transparent. The set of illustrative icons is meaningful and user-friendly; through the icons, the user is enabled to more easily and quickly understand the type of personal data that will be involved and shared. The icons do not replace the traditional informed consent policy, but align with it and complement it for a comprehensive view of the user.

ReD - Compliant-Regulatory Data Exchange

ReD is a software component belonging to the class of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs), i.e. technologies that embody fundamental data protection principles by adopting countermeasures in compliance with regulation. ReD provides three main features:

Consent-based Exchange authorises data exchange between parties (i.e. data controller and data processor) based on consent provided by data owner (i.e. data subject) and agreed with data controller through smart contracts. This ensures data subjects to have full control of their own (personal) data;
Notification notifies specific events impacting data control (e.g. data access request or data breaches) to interested parties (e.g. data subject). This ensures data subjects’ rights (i.e. to be informed);
Data Access Tracking constantly monitors and logs data access, building evidence of activities on data.

ReD is based on three building blocks: i) blockchain and smart contracts technology to register and rectify consents to access data (built on GoQuorum); message queue mechanisms for notification of events (built on RabbitMQ); and an orchestration logic to enable and manage activities in response to specific message events (built on Python). With these building blocks and features, ReD ensures at the same time i) trust between parties; ii) data integrity and immutability; iii) confidentiality and privacy.