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Identity Management for Health Professionals

A Method for the Integration of Responsibility, Organization, and IT

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Abstract

As a result of growing economic pressures, collaborations and process orientation are rapidly gaining importance for hospitals. With organisation and software landscapes which have grown over time in line with specific professional groups and functions, the paradigm shift places high demands on integration. One of the key challenges in this context is the hospital-wide management of medical staff identities along patient processes. Effective identity management calls for technical means (e.g. for exchanging user data between applications), organisational definitions (e.g. HR processes for starts, departures and changes of hospital medical staff) and regulated responsibilities (e.g. for role definitions). The article shows that while the technical solutions do exist in practice, the necessary prerequisites are frequently missing where organisation and responsibility are concerned. The changes linked with meeting those prerequisites are likely to affect the work of medical staff and can encounter resistance. A very cautious approach is required to the apparently “technical” task of establishing a system of identity management. The article presents a procedure model which has been put to the test in practice. It ensures that responsibility and authority for identity management are successively installed in line with the specific circumstances that prevail in hospitals.

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Notes

  1. For the integration between the applications of different institutions (external cooperation, integration scenario b), technical concepts for distinguishing between centralized authentication and decentralized authorization are known under the heading of “Identity Federation” in the hospitals surveyed (cf. Böhm and Caumanns 2007). As yet, however, no solutions have been implemented or any concrete planning steps taken. In none of the hospitals surveyed is it clear how the various organizational structures and processes as well as the different compliance and security policies of the institutions involved are to be taken into account. What is clear throughout, however, is that “order” first has to be established in internal identity management before link-ups with external partnerscan be initiated.

  2. The Data Hub can also be connected to applications which administer patient data. If, for example, web-based eHealth services are to be offered to patients and authentication and authorization are necessary for the respective applications, patient data can be extracted and user data created via the DDS.

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  1. Institute of Information Management (IWI), University of St. Gallen, Mueller-Friedberg-Str. 8, 9000, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Peter Rohner

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  1. Peter Rohner
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Correspondence to Peter Rohner.

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Accepted after three revisions by Prof. Dr. Buhl.

This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Rohner P (2012) Identitätsmanagement für Behandelnde in Krankenhäusern. Reifegradmodell und Methode zur Integration von Verantwortungs-, Organisations- und IT-Aspekten. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: 10.1007/s11576-012-0346-y.

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Rohner, P. Identity Management for Health Professionals. Bus Inf Syst Eng 5, 17–33 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-012-0244-2

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