Title: Implementing digital signatures for healthcare enterprises: the case of online disability evaluation reports

Authors: Bengisu Tulu, Haiqing Li, Samir Chatterjee, Brian Hilton, Thomas Horan

Addresses: School of Information Science, Claremont Graduate University, 130 East Ninth Street, Claremont, CA 91711, USA. ' School of Information Science, Claremont Graduate University, 130 East Ninth Street, Claremont, CA 91711, USA. ' School of Information Science, Claremont Graduate University, 130 East Ninth Street, Claremont, CA 91711, USA. ' School of Information Science, Claremont Graduate University, 130 East Ninth Street, Claremont, CA 91711, USA. ' School of Information Science, Claremont Graduate University, 130 East Ninth Street, Claremont, CA 91711, USA

Abstract: This paper presents a conceptual security framework and a case study of a digital signature solution implementation for a healthcare organisation that provides disability evaluation services for various government agencies and private companies. One service the company provides for its clients is online disability report generation and electronic report submission. When generating these disability reports, the signature of the examining physician is required for submission. The current process used by the company involves the manual collection of signatures. To streamline this process, and to meet legal and client requirements, the company investigated a digital signature solution. A security framework previously proposed was utilised to guide the implementation of the digital signature solution. This security framework consists of eight sequential stages. An in-depth analysis of the first seven stages for this case is provided, including guidelines for choosing digital signature solutions, vendor analyses and implementation issues.

Keywords: case study; digital signatures; healthcare; public key infrastructure; security framework; online evaluation reports; disability evaluation reports; electronic reports; medical reports; patient reports.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2005.006992

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2005 Vol.6 No.4/5/6, pp.470 - 488

Published online: 02 May 2005 *

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