A landing page to help OHIN members navigate the current and future thinking of OpenHIE Privacy and Security
Preamble
Privacy and security are two related, but quite distinct, topics. In its 2016 document, Connecting Health and Care for the Nation – A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap, the US department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states that:
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In many low-resource settings the legislative and policy protections for personal health information (PHI) privacy and security are still in the process of being developed and enacted. Even so, it is an underlying principle of the OpenHIE initiative that privacy, security and confidentiality of PHI are important requirements and that, at a minimum, internationally accepted de facto baseline protections should be supported. It is expected that, as implementing jurisdictions' PHI policies mature, expanded protections may be operationalized in the OpenHIE infrastructure to augment the initial, basic capabilities.
OHIE Privacy and Security Framework
Security Technology
Basic Security - Technical capabilities | OHIE Security - Level 1 | OHIE Security - Level 2 | OHIE Security - Level 3 |
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Encryption in transit between entities | System Level encrypt transactions between HIE and external system | HIE System Component level Encrypted transactions inside the HIE | |
Security in processing / storage | HIE System Component Level - Option OHIE Architecture components have the option to require authentication to access data | HIE Component Level OHIE Architecture components require authentication to access data | |
Authentication / Identity assertion level
| System Level HIE and the external system are authenticated at the “device” level | HIE System Component level HIE components are mutually authenticated at the device level | User Level External systems are able to assert user identity, location and purpose of use to the HIM |
Audit Record Points | HIE Component Level Audits for PHI transactions Mirrored audits are collected between the HIM and infrastructure services whenever PHI is conveyed. | HIE Component Level Audits for all transactions Mirrored audits are collected between the HIM and infrastructure services whenever PHI is conveyed. | Mirrored audits between all parties POS systems are able to send relevant audits to central audit-repository |
Audit Records Content | Basic content Transactions between the HIE and an external system are tracked. | Audit contents contain subject field Audits contain the X.509 Subject field of the requesting party | Detailed Audit Contents Audit contents All audits contain the asserted user identity, location and purpose of use. |
OpenHIE's Basic Privacy & Security Behaviour
As of OpenHIE v2 release, the basic privacy & security behaviour of the reference architecture may be described as follows:
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