Metrarc is a University spin out based in Cambridge with research and development labs at the Universities of Essex and Kent, developing novel and ground-breaking technology called ICMetrics™ for deriving secure encryption keys from the properties of digital systems without the need to store any of the encryption keys, digital signatures or ICMetric data. Metrarc is poised to revolutionise security for The Internet-of-Things (IoT) and help safeguard the electronic assets of business, and consumers through the commercialization of its ICMetric platform, which is a disruptive technology underpinned by £2 million of research funding (from EPSRC and EU) and which is protected by a suite of IPR, including two granted US patents. As the IoT begins to burgeon the ability to establish trust and provence the identity and integrity of such devices becomes a paramount concern in order to ensure that user privacy and personal data are respected and cyber crime is prevented. One of the best ways to ensure data is not breached is by the use of encryption technology. The market for security based on encryption is growing rapidly and predicted to be enormous by 2020. One of the main problems with all current cencryption technologies is the need to store an encryption key. Metrarc’s ICMetric™ techology does not store a key or any other data and is therfore of great interest to IoT applications particularly where data security is paramount such as in healthcare applications. This project will investigate the proof-of-concept of employing novel secure system techniques for deriving encryption keys from the operating characteristics of devices comprising the IoT focusing on dedicated sensor systems for sports and healthcare. This will build upon the highly significant results displayed by Metrarc's research work. The project deliverables will include two proof-of-concept demonstrators to showcase its disruptive technology as suitable for licensing.

Mobile and handheld devices are become increasingly popular and are now adopted widely. There has been a widespread shift from personal computers to such mobile devices and a very significant proportion of the internet traffic is now generated on these devices, which are employed widely for commercial transactions and payments. While considerable effort has been invested in developing mobile applications, associated questions of ensuring the security of personal data, both with respect to the transmission of such data and limiting access to such data to authorised individuals is sometimes overlooked. Yet this is crucial to facilitate commercial uptake and individual safety and security.

The need to protect the integrity of nodes within a distributed network has long been recognised, but the increasingly widespread adoption of such networks raises new challenges, particularly where these devices are communicating autonomously. ICmetrics represents a ground-breaking new approach for generating unique identifiers for embedded devices enabling secure encrypted communication between devices potentially significantly reducing both fraudulent activity such as eavesdropping and device cloning. While data encryption techniques are now highly sophisticated and well established, encryption itself cannot necessarily protect against fraudulent data manipulation when the security of encryption keys cannot be absolutely guaranteed. ICmetrics is able to address these significant security issues.

GRIP on MASH will address the unmet public health need of reducing disease burden and comorbidities associated with Metabolic dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD). Together with seven medical technology, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, we will devise a sustainable and scalable GRIP on MASH Platform that will enable access to at-risk patients developing or having MASLD through the early detection of this condition at the primary care level. This Platform will allow A) the early detection of patients with MASLD: distributed in 12 European Centers of Excellence (CoEs), 10,000 patients at high risk of MASLD - defined as patients with type-2 diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, obesity or arterial hypertension - will be screened and characterized; B) better patients’ stratification: the Platform will comprise artificial intelligence-based decision support tools that will make use of existing and novel biomarkers/biomarker combinations. Their predictive accuracy will be tested at the primary care level; there we will perform multi-OMICs analysis (proteomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, genomics, metagenomics and fluxomics) in fasted blood samples and we will explore imaging biomarkers/organ-on-a-chip to find future non-invasive diagnostic alternatives for the current standard (liver biopsies); and C) personalized lifestyle advice, by exploring evidence-based lifestyle features and the effect of nutritional recommendations: among the cohorts at the CoEs, we will use validated questionnaires to assess physical activity, diet, sleep, smoking, alcohol consumption, and perception of stress. Integrating patients’ perspectives with the participation of two patient organizations, the trustworthiness and sustainability of our GRIP on MASH Platform will be assessed by investigating potential economic, ethical and regulatory barriers to its future adoption. GRIP on MASH will change healthcare practice in MASLD and reduce the disease burden for patients.

SHiELD will unlock the value of health data to European citizens and businesses by overcoming security and regulatory challenges that today prevent this data being exchanged with those who need it. This will make it possible to provide better health care to mobile citizens across European borders, and facilitate legitimate commercial uses of health data. The exchange of health data is already possible, but rarely happens in practice because it is hard to ensure that the combined ‘end-to-end’ system will be secure and comply with data protection laws. SHiELD will address these security and compliance challenges: • providing models and analysis tools for automated identification of end-to-end security risks and compliance issues and supporting privacy and ‘by design’; • defining an open and extensible data exchange architecture based on epSOS, able to support security measures to address these risks; • developing security mechanisms to deal with new and emerging risks, such as inference attacks on sensitive data, and risks from relatively unprotected mobile edge devices; • providing faster and more cost effective methods to verify and monitor compliance with multiple sets of applicable regulations; SHiELD case studies will address cross border scenarios in which a citizen needs health care while in one Member State, and care givers need access to their health data from different Member States. SHiELD will also consider how commercial providers of lifestyle services or wearable sensors may be involved in such data exchanges. SHiELD will thereby also create opportunities for using health data to create such products and services addressing the common European market. SHiELD will provide guidance in best practice to achieve end-to-end security and data protection compliance in health and health related applications. SHiELD will also feed into CEN-Cenelec and ETSI efforts to create EU standards for data protection by design in eHealth.