Electric Medical Record Exchange:Certificate approach

Abstract

Electronic medical records (EMR) tend to be a part of health information system that allows storage, retrieval and manipulation of records. In addition, EMR also can save human resource, space and papers than traditional medical record. A referral patient has to fill in a form of personal information and examine again in another hospital if she/he do not use EMR. Hence, the Executive Yuan has approved the National Health Informatics Project (NHIP) proposed by the Department of Health (DOH). From 2006 to 2011, the NHIP has been promoting standards, laws, platforms, authentication and security of health information infrastructure. In general, people who use EMR exchange feel relieved if the EMR exchange system is secure. But now, the DOH use USB flash disk for EMR exchange which exists many security faults such as USB virus. Furthermore, the responsibility of unintentionally medical records revelation is also a problem. In this study, we propose “EMR exchange: Certificate approach” which use cryptography mechanism such as OpenCA, symmetric/asymmetric encryption, hashing function, security socket layer (SSL) etc. Certificate approach protects EMR exchange from Trojans program and hacker invasion and SSL provides secure channel for EMR exchange. Finally, the technique of this study also could be used in telemedicine and elderly care applications.