Person identification and authentication – Key to eGovernment and eHealth services

Published: 11/17/2009 Translations are available in:

DE, IT, DAN, CZ 

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - (HealthTech Wire / News) - eGovernment procedures provide to citizens easy to handle and fast services which stepwise replace traditional bureaucratic paper based contacts between governmental institutions and citizens. eHealth has the potential – besides the simplification of administrative procedures – to secure and raise availability, accessibility and quality of health services. eHealth is an essential contributor for improving patient safety.

Of course there are overlaps between eGovernment and eHealth. One of these is a basic, sensible but central requirement for all relevant procedures: proper, secure and easy to handle identification and authentication, that can be applied also in cross border services. The two Large Scale Pilots STORK and epSOS, both co- funded by Member States and the EU-commission, are working on this issue, making proposals on what are the common requirements, what the differences are and how to secure that future developments are not running in diverse directions.

Working on identity management in the health area is not reduced to unique identification of patients, but also of health professionals and health service institutions. Individual health data are handled as explicit sensitive data and the definition and management of rights is essential for reaching a status which conforms to the legal systems in the member states.  Data protection is one of the key issues and it is part of building up an environment of trust which will allows patients and healthcare providers to use eHealth services, such as pan-institutional patient summary records or ePrescription systems.

In the epSOS project identity management is one of the essential tasks that are being addressed. The cooperation between STORK and epSOS has shown that requirements in the government and public health services are quite close. Some of the member states even use similar identification mechanisms while some of the member states have decided to keep the sectors apart. epSOS is trying to find solutions which are compatible with the national regulations and concepts of the participating countries.

The Swedish EU-presidency in cooperation with the European Commission organises the 5th EU conference in the area of eGovernment under the title “Teaming up for eUnion” which will be held in Malmö, November 18th to 20th 2009. The focus of the conference lies on eGovernment Services, outcomes will be definitely of high relevance to eHealth.

###