Emergency access authorization for personally controlled online health care data

Personally controlled health records (PCHR) systems have emerged to allow patients to control their own medical data. In a PCHR system, all the access privileges to a patient's data are granted by the patient. However, in many emergency cases, it is impossible for the patient to participate in access authorization on site when immediate medical treatment is needed. To solve the emergency access authorization problem in the absence of patients, we consider two cases: a) the requester is already in the PCHR system but has not obtained the access privilege of the patient's health records, and b) the requester does not even have an account in the PCHR system to submit its request. For each of the two cases, we present a method for emergency access authorization, utilizing the weighted voting and source authentication cryptographic techniques. Our methods provide an effective, secure and private solution for emergency access authorization, that makes the existing PCHR system frameworks more practical and thus improves the patients' experiences of health care when using PCHR systems. We have implemented a prototype system as a proof of concept.