Providing Secure Access to Confidential Patient Information Detailing Diabetic Condition

Can secure access be granted to confidential patient records using the Internet? Our study has involved providing distributed access to one such confidential information database in a United Kingdom (UK) secondary care (hospital) organisation. We describe the application chosen to be distributed, the security systems used to protect the data, the reasons for the implementation decisions made and the results of the test data and feedback from the users taking part in a trial of the system. We conclude by stating that secure access to patient information systems over the internet is possible using the architecture we have in place, but for distributed access to patient information systems to be successful the cost to ownership of the system must be far outweighed by the benefits. However, as more business processes become Internet based and high connection bandwidth becomes available at reasonable prices, systems such as ours will be present in day to day operation amongst a large number of the disparate operations of the UK National Health Service (NHS).