Online healthcare in India

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Online healthcare in India

The ultimate goal of every healthcare provider is to provide quality patient care so the systems that manage patient records and other sensitive information must be kept secure

Shekhar Kirani

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

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BANGALORE, INDIA: The Internet in India is growing in leaps and bounds. The broadband subscribers have doubled in the last year to 4.57 million and DoT targets will add about 20 million high speed connections by 20101. Even in rural India, the Ministry of Communication and IT has announced it will set up 112,000 community service centers this year.

Shekhar Kirani, Vice President, VeriSign India

Shekhar Kirani, Vice President, VeriSign India

One of the industries that can significantly benefit from this rapid growth of the Internet is the healthcare industry in India. The Internet is transforming healthcare services all around the world. It is creating a new conduit not only for communication but also in the access, sharing, and exchange of information among people and machines.

By creating Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) hospitals can reduce errors, cut administrative costs, eliminate duplicate procedures, and save valuable time when it comes to emergency medical care. It also allows the patient greater participation in healthcare decisions by:

* Enabling patients to videoconference with their healthcare providers
* Providing immediate access of patients' medical records, thereby aiding the speed of diagnosis in an emergency
* Ensuring that patients have the same opportunity to access, share and exchange information about their personal well-being

Challenges to online healthcare
The ultimate goal of every healthcare provider is to provide quality patient care so the systems that manage patient records and other sensitive information must be kept secure.

Some of the main concerns of online healthcare would be:

* Assuring patients their confidential medical data is secure
* Complying with various government requirements and regulations
* Finding ways to detect and protect against medical fraud

Aiding this revolution in healthcare is VeriSign, a trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services that is helping healthcare organisations, pharmaceutical companies and providers of online medical records tackle the challenges of securing and protecting confidential and proprietary information while ensuring authorised access.

Multilayer Security: Prescription for Safe Online Healthcare
Online healthcare presents an end-to-end security problem that requires an end-to-end solution, above and beyond what single point security products have been able to offer. That end-to-end solution is called multilayer security, protecting the transaction on multiple levels to deliver a greater level of security.

A multilayer approach addresses the full spectrum of online challenges healthcare companies face including protection against patient identity theft, loss of privacy, and fraud stemming from online transactions. Such an approach delivers a continuum of protection across all critical areas of the online healthcare transaction: authenticating the Web site, protecting the transaction, protecting the consumer's identity, and fraud detection/protection.

Authenticating Web site: SSL Certificates
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates enable consumers to verify the identity of the certificate owner and ensure that the healthcare Web site is indeed authentic. Many consumers are well-versed from retail and other Web sites in looking for the "https" in their browser's address bar as proof that the site has authenticated itself with an SSL certificate. Now, more advanced SSL certificates called Extended Validation (EV) Certificates provide additional cues as well that help to extend trust online, such as turning the address bar green and displaying the name of the certificate owner within the address bar.

Protecting Transaction: SSL Encryption
SSL technology establishes a private communication channel where data can be encrypted during online transmission, protecting sensitive patient information from electronic eavesdropping. Most Internet users are familiar with the tiny lock icon that appears on pages that have been encrypted by SSL certificates. Healthcare companies should look to use at least 128-bit SSL certificates or the more secure 256-bit SSL certificates to enable the strongest encryption available for their customers.

Protecting Consumer Identity: Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication (2FA) relies on two different security measures to authenticate a consumer's identity. Using more than one factor is also known as strong authentication and can ensure a significantly more secure experience for consumers. A criminal who steals only the first factor, which is considered the user name and password, will not be able to forge the second factor, which is a physical credential, and will be unable to authenticate the account owner's identity.

Likewise, the reverse is true; anyone who may steal the second factor will not know the first factor and will be unsuccessful. Two-factor authentication solutions can take the form of point-to-point products where consumers use a different credential for each Web site they visit or a shared authentication network where consumers use the same credential across multiple sites.

Compared to a standalone 2FA solution, a shared authentication network delivers an extremely user-friendly and effective method of two-factor authorisation that encourages and rewards consumer adoption. A shared authentication network enables 2FA to be both easy to use (regardless of the consumer's level of technology sophistication), and convenient, allowing the consumer to use the same credential across participating sites.

Organizations leveraging a shared authentication network benefit not only from increased consumer adoption, but the myriad advantages inherent in a hosted solution: lower costs, reduced risk, little or no maintenance and scalability.

Protecting Against Fraud: Fraud Detection
While SSL and 2FA are proactive and visible forms of security, fraud detection is invisible to the consumer. Fraud detection technology works behind the scenes to detect anomalies that could signal potential fraud. It "learns" how each user behaves and only becomes visible to the user when additional authentication is needed based on predetermined parameters.

As the Internet becomes ubiquitous, there is tremendous potential for the online healthcare market in India. The main goal is to ensure the health and security of the patient. The use of online healthcare can make communication more effective and efficient, ease diagnosis and help achieve a higher quality of patient care. However all these benefits would be lost if the integrity of the patient data is compromised. Healthcare organisations that implement the various security measures for online communications can build trust with patients, which is imperative to gain widespread acceptance and adoption of e-healthcare initiatives. And once these initiatives reach critical mass, the resulting paradigm shift can deliver far-reaching benefits for all.

The author is Vice President, VeriSign India

©CIOL Bureau

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