The health care industry has reached a defining point for building a solid identity management infrastructure, and for meaningful use of electronic health records, the Smart Card Alliance Healthcare Council said.

The Healthcare Council in 2011 plans to continue providing guidance and educational materials on strong authentication and smart card technology for health care professional and patient identity applications. This includes promoting two-factor authentication for patient, provider and payer access to electronic health records and personal health records along with strong patient identity management to combat fraud, waste and abuse.

In 2010, the council submitted comments to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology stating that the requirement for strong, multi-factor authentication needs to be incorporated into Stage 2 of Meaningful Use in order to protect identities, networks and information systems.

Newly-elected officers and steering committee leading the Council for 2011/2010 are as follows:

• Chair: Michael Magrath, CSCIP, Gemalto
• Vice chair: Dale Grogan, CSCIP, LifeMed Card, Inc.
• Secretary: Anna Fernezian, CSCIP, CSCIP/G, CSC
• Gurpreet Manes, Oberthur Technologies
• Bob Merkert, CSCIP, SCM Microsystems
• Matthew Neuman, Giesecke & Devrient

Also in 2010, the Council submitted a statement on two-factor authentication for personal health records to ONC, stating that strong authentication options such as smart cards, tokens or one-time password devices should be made available to access information in electronic personal health records.

For more information on health care and identity including reports, industry organizations, resources, and news, visit the Healthcare Council’s Web page dedicated to Healthcare Identity Resources.

---

Related articles:

Health Care’s Identity Crisis Card technology in healthcare: HIPAA and beyond Smart Health Cards: HIPAA and Beyond