Keep an Eye On These Trends
Healthcare IT is a fast-changing field and today’s trend is tomorrow’s environment. Among the ongoing developments:
Smart Cards for PHRs
Personal Health Records are picking up in popularity. A recent national survey on attitudes toward health information technology by the California Healthcare Foundation found that Americans are engaged in their health and medical care when they have easy access to their health information online.
Currently, seven percent of adults use a PHR, but 40 percent of those who don’t use one say they are interested.
According to the study, two-thirds of the public remain concerned about the privacy and security of their health information, but the majority of those using a PHR are not very worried about the privacy of the information contained in the PHR.
A new form factor for PHRs would give individuals portability and security of their medical information. The smart card is a good option to consider. The word “card” is used as the generic term to describe any device in which smart card technology is used.
A smart card is a device that includes an embedded integrated circuit that can be either a secure microcontroller or equivalent intelligence with internal memory or a memory chip alone. The card connects to a reader with direct physical contact or with a remote contactless radio frequency interface. With an embedded microcontroller, smart cards have the unique ability to store large amounts of data, carry out their own on-card functions (e.g., encryption and mutual authentication) and interact intelligently with a smart card reader.
Smart cards provide a highly effective mechanism to protect the privacy of an individual that must use a biometric identity system.
The biometric information can be stored on the smart card rather than in an online database, allowing the biometric owner the opportunity to manage the physical possession of the card holding the individual’s biometric information.
The biometric data can be secured with state-of-the-art encryption techniques while providing full three-factor authentication capability at the card/reader level.
- Something you have – the card with all of its security capabilities
- Something you know – a password or personal identification number (PIN)
- Something you are – the biometric
In a non-smart-card-based application, the password or PIN and biometric would be stored in an online database outside the control of the individual and the biometric information would be captured and passed to an application for matching.
The individual’s biometric can be captured by a reader and passed to the smart card for matching, rather than passing the stored biometric information to the reader for matching. The individual’s biometric information would never leave the card, preventing virtually any possibility of compromise.
Smart card technology conforms to international standards and is available in a variety of form factors, including plastic cards, key fobs, watches, subscriber identification modules used in GSM mobile phones, and USB-based tokens.
New Government Funds for Electronic Health Records (EHR)
The national stimulus bill included $45 billion to upgrade to EHR, and many smaller healthcare organizations are taking advantage of it. EHRs reduce healthcare costs, enhance quality of care, improve evidence-based medicine, and provide the benefits of electronic medical records. In contrast, handwritten medical records can be hard to read and breed medical errors. They require large amounts of storage space, incur transportation costs, and resist use in studies.
Financing EHRs
Application Service Providers (ASPs) are an attractive option offering lower cost. In another economical strategy, similar organizations are banding together to share EHR software costs.
Personal Health Records (PHR)
PHRs will continue to proliferate, given the appeal to individuals of owning their health information. PHRs usually include data on:
- Medications (and their dosages)
- Allergies
- Adverse drug reactions
- Illnesses
- Hospitalizations and surgeries
- Vaccinations
- Lab test results
- Family history
