Positively identifying Health Practitioners

Significant trust is placed in the systems and processes surrounding Practitioner’s access to Health Information Systems.

Currently these Health IT systems are not routinely linked to the sources of truth, the Practitioner’s ‘Regulatory Authority’s’ Register. They rely upon disconnected and manually provided documentation, both for the identity of Providers and also the Operational Credentials (their scope of practise).

The core Registration Record is often not established electronically with linked chains of trust to official identity systems, they are  established by humans checking paper document copies. Sometimes Identity Verification mistakes can happen, sometimes the ID is not directly matched to qualifications. When things go wrong, they tend to fail publicly; this poses a risk for diminished public confidence on the Health Profession as a whole.

The good news is that improvements are coming. HealtheID aims to bring ‘RealMe® Verified Identities’ to the Health Sector in a way that the Regulatory Authorities can use, along-side and to feeding into their registers. A secondary benefit for Practitioners themselves is to allow these Accredited Identities (HealtheID account holders) to be capable of interacting with the systems and services within the sector,  by extending single sign on services (SSO) to all of NZ’s Health IT systems.

Together these benefits are significant to the Practitioner communities, the Regulatory Authorities, Software Application Vendors, and the general public (Health Service Consumers) alike.

If you’re interested in news on these developments – please get in touch, email sales@enigma.co.nz