About Smart Cards : Applications : Healthcare Identity

	About Smart Cards : Applications : Healthcare Identity

Healthcare Identity Resources

A solid foundation for healthcare information management requires accurate identification of each person receiving or providing healthcare services, and anyone accessing or using this information. As the healthcare industry moves away from paper-based medical records that are controlled by physical access to buildings, rooms, and files, an infrastructure that supports strong identity and security controls is needed. The healthcare identity management infrastructure must have a way to uniquely and securely authenticate each person across the healthcare infrastructure, whether that interaction is in person or over the Internet.

Healthcare organizations worldwide are implementing smart health cards supporting a wide variety of features and applications. Smart health cards can improve the security and privacy of patient information, provide the secure carrier for portable medical records, reduce healthcare fraud, support new processes for portable medical records, provide secure access to emergency medical information, enable compliance with government initiatives and mandates, and provide the platform to implement other applications as needed by the healthcare organization.

The Smart Card Alliance Healthcare Council offers the resources below to assist healthcare organizations in their efforts to implement a robust identity management infrastructure.