Healthcare Applications

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.

Secure Technology Alliance Healthcare Resources

• Healthcare Identity Resources. This resource page lists Secure Technology Alliance reports and industry organizations, resources and news relating to healthcare identity.

Secure Technology Alliance Healthcare Reports

• A Healthcare CFO’s Guide to Smart Card Technology and Applications. Developed for healthcare CFOs, this white paper outlines the key benefits and business case for using smart cards for healthcare applications. The white paper identifies some of the major challenges faced by healthcare CFOs and discusses how smart card technology can provide innovative, practical and cost-effective solutions.
• Benefits of Smart Cards versus Magnetic Stripe Cards for Healthcare Applications. This brief describes the benefits of smart cards for healthcare applications and provides a comparison with magnetic stripe cards.
• The Benefits of Strong Authentication for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This document was developed by the Health and Human Services Council in response to the GAO report, “Potential Uses of Electronically Readable Cards for Beneficiaries and Providers.” The document discusses the benefits of implementing strong authentication for beneficiaries and providers using smart card technology. Download document. View document.
• Complementary Smart Card Guidance for the WEDI Health Identification Card Implementation Guide. Version 1.1 of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange’s (WEDI) Health Identification Card Implementation Guide includes Integrated Circuit Cards (ICC), commonly known as smart cards, as an appropriate card type. For organizations considering upgrading their member identity cards to smart cards, this document serves as a supplement to the WEDI Health Identification Card Implementation Guide. It provides WEDI-compliant smart card designs and includes a discussion of the features and benefits of smart ID cards for healthcare providers and payers.
• Effective Healthcare Identity Management: A Necessary First Step for Improving U.S. Healthcare Information Systems – A Smart Card Alliance Brief for Government Policy Makers and Other Stakeholders. Government policy makers are looking carefully at the best ways to improve the efficiency of information systems in the healthcare industry. Much emphasis has been placed on the need for electronic health records for every American, and at ways to exchange those records at the regional, state and national levels. But this is putting the cart before the horse. Such an effort must start with the accurate identification of each person receiving healthcare services or participating in healthcare benefit programs. Next, there must be a way to uniquely and securely authenticate that person across the healthcare system, including over the Internet, in a secure and privacy sensitive way. This brief was developed by the Smart Card Alliance Healthcare and Identity Councils to introduce the current problems with healthcare identity management, security and privacy, and propose leveraging existing federal standards and technologies already used in other government identity programs.
• EMV 101 for the Healthcare Industry. This white paper provides an educational resource on EMV chip migration for the healthcare industry. The white paper describes EMV chip technology, discusses the impact of EMV for healthcare providers and hospital systems, and outlines how the healthcare industry can prepare for EMV chip migration.
• Getting to Meaningful Use and Beyond: How Smart Card Technology Can Support Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records. “Meaningful use” has the top priority of today’s healthcare industry. In 2010, the government, healthcare organizations, consumers and technology providers came together to move toward interoperable electronic health records that can transform the healthcare industry. This white paper outlines the ways in which smart card-based systems can better position healthcare organizations and providers for meaningful use of electronic health records, while addressing many of the security and privacy challenges that come with electronic health records and health data exchange.
• Healthcare 2.0: A New Paradigm for a Secure and Streamlined Healthcare Industry. The Smart Card Alliance Health and Human Services Council developed this infographic to depict the impact of smart card technology on the future of healthcare identity authentication and suggest how current challenges can be solved through interoperability, increased security, and multi-factor authentication. Download infographic. View document.
• Healthcare Identity Authentication and Payments Convergence: A Vision for the Healthcare Industry. This white paper outlines a vision for healthcare identity authentication and payments convergence and provides insight into the opportunities and challenges afforded to the healthcare community as the U.S. migrates to EMV. Download white paper. View document
• Healthcare Identity Management: The Foundation for a Secure and Trusted National Health Information Network. Policy makers are looking carefully at the best ways to improve our healthcare system with much emphasis being placed on the need for electronic health records for every American. This effort also includes creating an infrastructure to allow the exchange of these records at the regional, state and national levels. This paper introduces the current challenges and explains why identity management in healthcare is an essential and foundational element that must be made a priority by policy makers in order to achieve the goals of widespread use of electronic health records to support the secure and seamless exchange of healthcare information. The paper also recommends best practices for introducing a healthcare identity management infrastructure–one that provides the needed security and privacy controls that should be specified by policy makers.
• Healthcare Identity Management LinkedIn Group
• HIPAA Compliance and Smart Cards: Solutions to Privacy and Security Requirements. This report describes how smart cards can be used to meet HIPAA Security Rule and Privacy Rule requirements.
• Identity Management in Healthcare webinar. Accurately linking patients with their personal medical information and managing patient information are significant problems today for hospitals, other healthcare providers and healthcare payers that impact administrative efficiency, revenue collection, legislative compliance and patient quality of care. This educational webinar provided a detailed review of how healthcare organizations are facing increasing regulatory challenges that will require new approaches to address patient identification and securely authenticating patient health data.
• Medical Identity Theft webinar. Medical identity theft is a serious and growing threat. This web seminar reviewed of the scope of the medical identity theft problem, the impact that electronic health records and health information exchanges have on privacy, the critical policy requirements that address medical identity theft, and the approaches being taken to protect patient health records.
• Medical Identity Theft in Healthcare. Healthcare data breaches and medical identity theft are growing problems as the healthcare industry moves to electronic health records and health information exchanges. This brief describes the security and privacy issues that the healthcare industry is facing and advocates that the industry move to strong identity management practices and technology solutions to improve the privacy and security of health information systems and electronic health records.
• Secure Technology Alliance Health and Human Services Council
• Smart Card Applications in the U.S. Healthcare Industry. This report describes the value that smart cards deliver in a variety of U.S. healthcare applications. The report reviews key challenges that the U.S. healthcare provider industry faces and examines the key drivers for implementing smart card-based systems to address these challenges.
• Smart Card Technology in Healthcare: Frequently Asked Questions. Smart cards are used worldwide to improve security and privacy of payment and identity applications. The Secure Technology Alliance Health and Human Services Council developed this document to answer questions about how smart cards work and how the technology is used to manage patient identity and protect a healthcare consumer’s personal information.
• Smart Cards and Biometrics in Healthcare Identity Applications. This white paper was developed by the Secure Technology Alliance Health and Human Services Council to provide an overview of smart card and biometric technologies, discuss the key considerations for selecting biometric and smart card technology for identity verification, and describe the benefits of combining smart cards and biometrics for identity applications.
• Smart Cards in U.S. Healthcare: Benefits for Patients, Providers and Payers. The paper describes the challenges within the healthcare industry and the clear opportunities for the use of smart card technology for security and privacy in healthcare. The paper examines smart card use in healthcare today and suggests additional applications for consideration.
• Smart Health ID Cards: Addressing Challenges with Patient Identity Management and Authentication webinar. Accurately identifying and authenticating patients are significant problems for hospitals, other healthcare providers and healthcare payers that impact administrative efficiency, revenue collection, legislative compliance and patient quality of care. This webinar focused on smart health ID cards for patients, reviewing the key challenges with patient identity management and authentication today and discussing how patient ID cards and smart card technology can address the critical issues. The American Medical Association Health Security Card pilot and the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center medical smart cards were featured as examples of smart health ID card programs.

Smart Health Card Implementations

The following profiles and resources showcase how organizations can successfully use smart cards for a wide variety of healthcare applications.

Other Healthcare Resources and Organizations

• American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA)
• Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH)
• Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)
• Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
• Medical Group Management Association (MGMA)
• Medical Identity Fraud Alliance (MIFA)
• National Association of Healthcare Access Management (NAHAM)
• Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
• SAFE BioPharma
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI)

The Secure Technology Alliance Health and Human Services Council offers additional resources for organizations implementing smart cards in healthcare applications.