EMR Identity Access Using Vendor-Independent Patient Record Mapping
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Solution Overview
Problem
Patients face challenges in accessing and managing their electronic medical records across multiple instances, requiring separate accounts, varying user interfaces, and proprietary APIs, which complicates data integration and marketing efforts.
Innovation Solution
A facility using vendor-independent protocols, such as FHIR, enables a single account to access multiple EMR instances, managing patient identities and data access through a unified interface, reducing the need for proprietary APIs and administrative complexity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If separate accounts are established for each EMR instance, then access to multiple EMR instances is enabled, but user interface complexity and administrative overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal login system that allows a single patient account to access multiple EMR instances from different vendors. The identity service acts as a mediator that translates between the unified patient-facing interface and the vendor-specific EMR systems, enabling one account to serve multiple functions across different platforms without requiring separate credentials for each system.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an identity service as an intermediary layer between patients and multiple EMR instances. This service receives authentication requests, manages patient identities centrally, and translates them into vendor-specific formats, thereby simplifying the user interface while maintaining compatibility with diverse EMR systems through the mediating identity service.
2Reliability
If vendor-specific proprietary APIs are used for data access, then EMR instance-specific functionality is maintained, but data integration complexity and administrative overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The identity service serves as an intermediary that handles vendor-specific API interactions behind a unified interface. It translates generic patient identity requests into vendor-specific authentication and data access protocols, maintaining reliable access to EMR instance-specific functionality while hiding the complexity of multiple proprietary APIs from the user and administering systems.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the system into two distinct layers: a unified patient-facing identity management layer and vendor-specific EMR instance layers. The identity service handles all cross-vendor coordination, while each EMR instance maintains its own proprietary functionality independently. This segmentation allows each component to operate optimally without requiring direct integration between diverse vendor systems.
3Reliability
If multiple separate accounts are required for different EMR instances, then access control is maintained per instance, but security management complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal identity management system that maintains access control across multiple EMR instances through a single patient account. The identity service centrally manages authentication credentials and authorization policies, enabling consistent security enforcement across diverse vendor systems without requiring separate account management for each instance.
Solution Approach 2:
The identity service acts as a security intermediary that centralizes authentication and authorization management. It verifies patient identities once and manages access rights to multiple EMR instances, thereby maintaining instance-specific access control requirements while dramatically simplifying security management by eliminating the need for separate credential management across multiple vendor systems.
Data Source
AI summary
A facility for providing access to an electronic medical record instance receives a login attempt from a client device that provides login credentials. The facility uses these login credentials to access an account key associated with the login credentials, and retrieves from a patient link database a mapping from the accessed account key to a mapped-to record identifier and a mapped-to instance identifier. The mapped-to record identifier identifies a patient record maintained on an electronic medical record instance identified by the mapped-to instance identifier. The facility uses the mapped-to record identifier and mapped-to instance identifier to provide the client device access to the patient record having the mapped-to record identifier on the instance identified by the mapped-to instance identifier.