Health care professionals protocol for secure online transmission of patient data

One of the results of the 49th Bavarian Physician's Conference was that in 1996 the Bavarian Statutory Health Care Administration (Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Bayerns, KVB) and the Bavarian Medical Association (Bayerische Landesärztekammer, BLAK) jointly suggested a project for the development and verification of a security infrastructure for the online transmission of medical patient data. This Project, the so-called "Health Care Professionals Protocol" (HCP-Protokoll), was designed to establish the first consensus standard for a secure and probably open system to be used in the health care system operating under the constraints of the diverse and heterogeneous IT-infrastructure in Bavaria, with a view towards utilization in all of Germany. In January 1997, the HCP-Protocol was accepted as the strategic mainline project for telematics applications in medicine by the State of Bavaria and endowed with more than 1.3 million DM in the framework of "Bavaria Online II". In the meantime, various national organizations of the German medical community as well as important industrial partners have expressed support for this initiative. Mention in the Roland-Berger study "Telematics in Health Care, Perspectives of Telemedicine in Germany", designation as an "exemplary scenario" in the final report of the Working Group 7 of the Forum Info 2000 "Telematics Applications in Health Care", as well as integration of the new German health professional card, make the HCP-Protocol the most promising candidate for a de facto standard in the security infrastructure for all participants in health care telecommunication in Germany. Since the middle of 1998, an expert group under the guidance of the joint "Projektbüro Telemedizin" of the KVB and BLAK has been working on the definition of this protocol, taking into consideration the current legal framework of the German medical profession (Berufsordnung), the German signature law (SigG), and the national data security laws (BDSG), as well as today's technical possibilities and existing components. The results of this definition will be published at the first opportunity (sometime during the first half of 1999) and then placed into public domain, so that any solution provider can reference this source to create secure and mutually interoperable application programs for health care professionals in Germany.