Patient Identification based on Control Numbers 3 A Distributed Patient Identification Protocol based on Control Numbers with Semantic Annotation

One important problem of information systems in healthcare is the localisation and access to electronic patient records across healthcare institute boundaries, especially in an international setting. The complexity of the problem is increased by the absence of a globally accepted standard for electronic healthcare records, the absence of unique patient identifiers in most countries and the strict data protection requirements that apply to clinical documents. This article describes a protocol that allows to identify locations of patient records for a given patient and to access these records if granted, under consideration of the legal and technical requirements. The protocol combines cryptographic techniques with semantic annotation and mediation and presents a simple, web service based access to clinical documents

The Lower Saxony research network design of environments for ageing : towards interdisciplinary research on information and communication technologies in ageing societies

Worldwide, ageing societies are bringing challenges for independent living and healthcare. Health-enabling technologies for pervasive healthcare and sensor-enhanced health information systems offer new opportunities for care. In order to identify, implement and assess such new information and communication technologies (ICT) the 'Lower Saxony Research Network Design of Environments for Ageing' (GAL) has been launched in 2008 as interdisciplinary research project. In this publication, we inform about the goals and structure of GAL, including first outcomes, as well as to discuss the potentials and possible barriers of such highly interdisciplinary research projects in the field of health-enabling technologies for pervasive healthcare. Although GAL's high interdisciplinarity at the beginning slowed down the speed of research progress, we can now work on problems, which can hardly be solved by one or few disciplines alone. Interdisciplinary research projects on ICT in ageing societies are needed and recommended