New Advanced Technologies to Provide Decentralised and Secure Access to Medical Records: Case Studies in Oncology

The main problem for health professionals and patients in accessing information is that this information is very often distributed over many medical records and locations. This problem is particularly acute in cancerology because patients may be treated for many years and undergo a variety of examinations. Recent advances in technology make it feasible to gain access to medical records anywhere and anytime, allowing the physician or the patient to gather information from an “ephemeral electronic patient record”. However, this easy access to data is accompanied by the requirement for improved security (confidentiality, traceability, integrity, ...) and this issue needs to be addressed. In this paper we propose and discuss a decentralised approach based on recent advances in information sharing and protection: Grid technologies and watermarking methodologies. The potential impact of these technologies for oncology is illustrated by the examples of two experimental cases: a cancer surveillance network and a radiotherapy treatment plan. It is expected that the proposed approach will constitute the basis of a future secure “google-like” access to medical records

Purposes of health identification cards in belgium.

Although other alternatives might exist, identification cards have been chosen as an acceptable and adequate tool to be used to identify patients and health professionals.They are planned for a digital signature and for access to electronic health records as well as for health information exchange and for databases querying. Local applications might exist independently, but the Federal State has now developed BeHealth, a platform for health professionals, social security personnel as well as the great public to facilitate a common access to some health data. Security conditions have been defined and are described