I’ve recently returned from the 7th ID Ecosystem Steering Group Plenary in Atlanta. This is an international public-private project focused on the anything-but-trivial issue of issuing people authoritative cyber-credentials: digital passports you can use to access government services, healthcare, banks and everything else online.
Cyber ID is more than a single-sign-on convenience, or a money-saver when businesses can stop asking you for the names of your pets, it’s rapidly becoming a critical foundation for cyber-security because it impacts the resiliency of our critical infrastructure.
Healthcare, it turns out, is becoming a design center for IDESG because healthcare represents the most diverse collection of human interactions of any large market sector. If we can solve cyber-identity for healthcare, we will have solved most of the other application domains.
The cyber-identity landscape includes:
- proving who you are without showing a physical driver’s license
- opening a new account without having to release private information
- eliminating the risk of identity theft
- civil or criminal accountability for your actions based on a digital ID
- reducing your privacy risks through anonymous or pseudonymous ID
- enabling delegation to family members or professional colleagues without impersonation
- reducing hidden surveillance by state or private institutions
- when appropriate, shifting control of our digital tools to us and away from corporations
The IDESG process is deliberate and comprehensive. It impacts many hot issues in health care including patient matching, information sharing for accountable care and population health, health information exchanges, prescription drug monitoring programs, accounting for disclosures, patient engagement and meaningful use, the physician’s ability to communicate and refer without institutional censorship, the patient’s ability to control information from our increasingly connected devices and implants, and more.
Hospitals and health industry incumbents that seek to solve the hot issues raised by health reform are not eager to wait for a deliberate and comprehensive process. For them, privacy and cyber-security is a nice-to-have. Who will pay for this digital enlightenment?
