BeeKeeperAI announced its expanded collaboration with Microsoft to allow algorithm developers and healthcare data stewards to access BeeKeeperAI, operating in the Microsoft Azure confidential computing (ACC) environment, through the Azure Marketplace. The enhanced collaboration aims to accelerate the understanding and use of confidential computing as the new frontier for healthcare AI research, development, deployment, and monitoring. BeeKeeperAI utilizes the security and scalability of the ACC infrastructure within its applications and services to create a secure and confidential collaboration environment where proprietary AI algorithms can be validated against privacy-protected data sets from multiple organizations.

A zero-trust confidential compute environment is designed to prevent visibility or access of the data or algorithm models by algorithm owners, data stewards, and BeeKeeperAI. This ensures data confidentiality and protects intellectual property. To secure regulatory approval and clinical adoption, algorithm developers have to prove the efficacy of their models but have difficulty accessing patient datasets without exposing their intellectual property or compromising patient privacy.

To address this challenge, BeeKeeperAI has implemented its platform for validating algorithms on protected data sets maintained in the Azure HIPAA compliant cloud environments of each participating data steward. The Azure confidential computing environment includes Intel® SGX secure application enclaves with minimal cyberattack surface. The keys for the encrypted data and model to move into the enclave for computing, allowing data stewards to keep sensitive patient data private while simultaneously enabling algorithm developers to test their encrypted models against the encrypted data.

Through Azure, algorithm developers can access information from multiple data stewards to rigorously validate the generalizability of their algorithms. BeeKeeperAI is now offering its insights on how to successfully validate AI within the confidential computing environment through its new workshop offered in the Azure Marketplace. The workshop addresses both the algorithm and data preparation, encryption, and uploading into the cloud environment (where they remain), ensuring that they are protected throughout the compute process.