Health Card: smart card, secure patient data

Advanced medicine and technology are boosting life expectancy. As people get older, however, they need more frequent and more expensive healthcare. At the same time, patients today see a wider range of doctors and specialists than ever before. Their often-redundant medical records are scattered across many different practices and medical offices in the healthcare system.

The world over, healthcare systems and their players are under pressure to save money. The cost explosion has become a critical issue for governments, insurance companies, hospitals, healthcare providers, pharmacies, and many others. Costs for medical services are rising for patients too. Our insurances absorb at least some of the costs related to emergency care, broken bones, ongoing treatment, check-ups, and hundreds of other kinds of care. Ideally, measures to cut costs and to optimize the healthcare system should benefit all stakeholders.

Part of the solution is to let technology and digitization play out their advantages. One of the most basic and vastly successful measures in the healthcare environment is the introduction of card-based e-health networks. Smart health cards manage patient identity and give practitioners and pharmacists secure access to their medical records.

G+D’s smart health cards improve communication between practitioners and enhance the quality of healthcare. They also streamline processes and reduce fraud. By enriching card-based, smart chip technology with medical applications and data, we have created an interoperable system that offers economic advantages to health insurance providers and improves usability for everyone. But most importantly, we provide high levels of security and privacy protection with our smart health cards, such as identification with 100 percent certainty.

Our Patient Data Cards standardize interactions between patients and healthcare professionals, from identification to medical record access. Many issuers also use patient smart cards to promote healthy behaviors: bonus program applications installed on the smart card chip offer patients incentives to kick bad habits or successfully complete specific treatments.

Only authorized physicians, dentists, and pharmacists can access patient card information and records in the healthcare telematics infrastructure. To do so, they need the right key – the Electronic Health Professional Card (HPC). Certificates determine who may access the patient’s data. 

However, access still requires the patient's express permission. PIN-based authentication, encryption, and digital signatures protect communication between the healthcare professional's smart card and the telematics infrastructure.

For smart card-based participation in the telematics infrastructure, we offer Secure Module Cards (SMCs). Generally, SMCs in combination with a connector and card terminal are required to access the telematics infrastructure. The technology identifies and authenticates the institution, and encrypts communications.