A pager goes off in the cardiac unit at 01:37. A nurse has to send a CT scan to the triage model before the surgeon wheels a patient into theatre. In most hospitals that file leaves its secure folder, lands on a server, runs through the model in plain text, then returns with a prediction. At that exact moment it is readable by anyone who has slipped past the perimeter. That gap – sometimes just a few milliseconds – costs the healthcare industry an average of?USD?9.77?million every time an attacker makes it through.

Clinicians cannot wait for perfect privacy. They need results in seconds, regulators need proof that personal data stays safe, and researchers need ways to share insights without shipping raw genomes across borders. Fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE, offers a path that meets all three demands.

What makes FHE different

Traditional “encryption at rest” works like a bank vault that must be opened for every withdrawal. FHE is a safe?deposit box that lets the bank count the money without opening the lid. Algorithms compute directly on ciphertext, so scans, lab values, and DNA strings never revert to plain text during processing. That single shift closes the last open window in the security stack, the moment when today’s AI workloads are most exposed.

The Wodan AI approach in practice

Wodan keeps both the input data and the machine?learning model in ciphertext from ingest to result. Each inference is cryptographically signed, proving that only approved code touched the record. Hospitals plug the runtime into existing containers without rewriting models, and an immutable log rolls every event into an audit file that satisfies HIPAA and GDPR evidence requests. The architecture follows a Zero Trust posture – every user, device, and workload must prove identity before access.

Four stories from the ward and the lab

• Encrypted diagnostics. A radiology team runs a stroke?detection model on CT images while the files stay encrypted. The model flags intracranial bleeds in under a second, and the record never appears in plain text. The hospital meets the HIPAA technical safeguard for “encryption during transmission and processing” and still shaves minutes off door?to?scan time.
• Genomic discovery across borders. A pharma consortium wants to scan population?scale DNA pools for rare mutation signatures. With FHE they push the algorithm to each site, run the computation on ciphertext, and pool only the encrypted results. No raw sequence leaves the originating country, so the study clears GDPR transfer rules.
• Collaboration without disclosure. Two clinics need to refine a sepsis?prediction model but cannot share patient records. Each runs training rounds locally on encrypted data, exchanges only encrypted gradients, and converges on a stronger model while every record stays on?prem.
• Remote monitoring that respects privacy. Wearable devices stream vitals to a predictive engine hosted in the cloud. FHE keeps the data encrypted in transit and at the point of inference, so the provider can alert clinicians to deterioration trends without handling readable telemetry.

Bringing it to your stack

Start by encrypting the dataset at the edge so no record leaves your network unprotected. Containerise the model with Wodan’s runtime and benchmark latency against your clinical?workflow target – most inference tasks complete well under a second on common GPU nodes. Map the immutable log to HIPAA sections?164.308 and?164.312, then point your GDPR data?protection impact assessment to the same evidence. Scale on a pay?per?use plan that grows from proof of concept to nationwide roll?out without capital hardware spend.

The takeaway

FHE changes the default from “decrypt to innovate” to “keep it encrypted and go faster.” It protects patients in the moment, satisfies auditors on demand, and frees researchers to collaborate without fear of exposure. If you want to see a stroke?triage model run on ciphertext – or test another workload – book a short demo. We will run the inference inside your environment, and no personal data will ever leave your premises.

 

Ready to see encrypted-in-use AI in action? Book a demo of Wodan AI solution today.