Secure access of patient’s medical and clinical data using HL7 protocol

Abstract

Undoubtedly, the universal recognition of web-based communication has become remarkable lately. However, the knowledge of the driving factor of such communication is yet uncertain for many people. This project examines the mean-ing of interoperability throughout illustrating two fundamental concepts on how computers can communicate. Such as: “functional interoperability” and “semantic interoperability”.

Accordingly, the project addresses the topic of adopting a secure protocol, which specifically designed for healthcare applications. Such protocol guarantees an ap-propriate communication among healthcare participants with the intention of en-suring a secure access to patients’ medical and clinical data. On the other hand, increases the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare delivery for the benefit of all.

The project presents a prototype of user-friendly interface for a web-based appli-cation. Such interface facilitates an easy access to patients’ medical and clinical data across integrated servers that are distributed throughout healthcare arena. Furthermore, the suggested interface enables patients to access their personal records remotely, in terms of on line registration, medical consultation, tracing re-sults and performing payments.

Consequently, having reliable healthcare system would play an important role in assuring the secure access to patient’s medical records. This issue has triggered the critical need for a secure protocol that enables the secure access without breaching patients’ confidentiality. Bearing in mind, that comprehensive healthcare system can perform securely according to the expected needs and behavior of healthcare participants. Therefore, the proposed system has strongly considered the security as a biggest issue, in sense of overcoming patient’s fears of nothing is totally secured.

Ultimately, the proposed prototype has been uploaded into the internet server, in order to be accessible by physicians and patients beyond the intranet boundaries. Therefore, implementing such application in the medical arena would possibly have a remarkable impact on the interoperability among different networks with high level of information confidentiality.