Accountable-eHealth Systems: the Next Step Forward for Privacy

EHealth systems promise enviable benefits and capabilities for healthcare, yet the technologies that make these capabilities possible brings with them undesirable drawback such as information security related threats which need to be appropriately addressed. Lurking in these threats are patient privacy concerns. Resolving these privacy concerns have proven to be difficult since they often conflict with information requirements of healthcare providers. It is important to achieve a proper balance between these requirements. We believe that information accountability can achieve this balance. In this paper we introduce accountable-eHealth systems. We will discuss how our designed protocols can successfully address the aforementioned requirement. We will also compare characteristics of AeH systems with Australia’s PCEHR system and identify similarities and highlight the differences and the impact those differences would have to the eHealth domain.