eHealth

Identity Management in German Health Care

A health insurance number is currently being introduced in Germany, together with the electronic health care card (eGK): it is designed to unequivocally identify an insurance policy holder. The eGK is issued by health insurers as an insurance card which also supports identification and authentication procedures. It saves cryptographic keys, carries out cryptographic functions and can also be used as a generic signature. In addition it can be used to generate tickets granting access rights for data inside applications that comply with the German health care system’s telematic infrastructure.

The eGK electronic health care card and telematic infrastructure do not currently provide the same functions as an electronic patient card (EPA). The connection between the eGK and health portals that provide this type of functionality is therefore becoming an important focus for research and development. There are already cross-border health portals in existence, but they must be expanded in order to use telematic infrastructures and the eGK in the German market.

At the same time it is possible to use a telematic infrastructure based on a service oriented architecture in order to connect various players in the German health care market directly with the portal systems from the hospital information system, health practice administration system or with the pharmacy administration systems. This would make new inter-institution business processes possible that could rely on a unified identity management system.

Main Focus: Test Methods

The business processes between patient, service suppliers (doctor, hospital) and the service providers (health fund, Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, etc.) require access to secure identities. Lasting solutions are planned in the fields of interoperability, scalability and robustness of platform components for electronic identities in the field of medicine, such as the development of specially chosen scenarios like IHEs (Integrated Health Environments) and HL7 (Health Level 7) in order to increase the level of acceptance to the approach to modern information and communication technologies in the medical care field. The expected greater availability of medical services and simultaneous lowering of costs would also be of great economic advantage. 

Specification based automated test methods based on TTCN-3 (Testing and Test Control Notation, ETSI and ITU standards) testing technologies are at the forefront of these tests, and they will make it possible to achieve a level of quality and dependability with the secure ID components that is demonstrable in the medical sphere, using the supplier’s components and solutions from the system vendors and service providers.