Health Care Profile

Full Title or Meme

This Health Care Profile is one of the Framework Profiles that will allow developers of code and user experience to determine if their systems are compliant with the framework.

Note that this profile is oriented to federated health systems like that in the United States. Still the privacy considerations should apply to all, especially to cross boarder access.

Context

• As a part of the creation of a set of Identity Ecosystems this profile is targeted to apply to any framework that handle user Protected Health Information (PHI).
• The effort to standardize PHI transfers has been steadily progress for years under pressure from the ONH, but many health providers view user's PHI as their proprietary asset.
• Now Apple has entered the equations with their health app which has gone directly to the health providers to acquire PHI as well as generating it on their own from the Apple watch. Now they are a PHI provider themselves, and presumably subject to all the regulation that entails.

Identifiers

• The Center for Medicare Services recently deployed a new Identifier for users of Medicare that is not tied to the user's social security number.
• The Department of Homeland security will be enforcing Real ID by 2020 for travel as well as border crossings.
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has created a SID.
• The US Treasury (for the IRS) is planning for a tax payer ID.
• The Department of Defense has issued PIV cards for access to national defense information (and has propagated that system to NATO).

All of these should result in the user's Identity being separated for the various uses. Obviously all the law enforcement agencies will ask for the unfettered ability to cross reference these Identifiers. Hopefully the API that allows that will be well protected.

References

• The page Health IT Record Location Service (Data Aggregation) contains a use case for locating user PHI.
• The page Health Care Profile Sandbox details a test suite that will allow developers of code and user experience to assure the compliance of their products to the framework.