Identity in federated electronic healthcare

In electronic healthcare several research and standardization activities are emerging that promote federation. In this scenario, the medical information present at different healthcare providers, such as hospitals, general practitioners, test laboratories, etc., are shared for an improved quality of experience from the patient perspective. However, sharing of medical data on a large scale exposes the patient to several privacy-related threats, such as massive data aggregation or profiling. Therefore, the selection of a privacy-preserving identification scheme is a primary requirement in federated e-health. This paper presents an identity management infrastructure that minimizes the above-mentioned threats.