Identity Verification Use Case: Organ Bank Donor Registrations

[Jodi Florence]

With the HITECH Act the healthcare industry is rapidly expanding into the digital age.  The use cases for technology in healthcare are growing – everything from making medical records available electronically, social networks for health and medical professionals being created, doctors writing prescriptions online, to consumers scheduling hospital visits or making an insurance claim online.  With this growth comes a heightened awareness on consumer privacy.  After all, we are talking about information that is highly sensitive and extremely personal.

Identity verification and authentication plays a very important role in the healthcare industry because it helps protect consumer privacy while automating processes that are cumbersome to both consumers and businesses.  And in some cases a cumbersome, manual process can cost lives.  Case in point:  Organ Donation.  The harder and more inconvenient it is for someone to become an organ donor, the fewer donors there are; and fewer lives will be saved.

The Nevada Organ Donor Network recognizes this.  That’s why they began allowing people to register as a donor online and adopted identity verification as part of its authentication process for new donors.  You can hear their story in Howard Anderson’s latest Information Security podcast on healthcareinfosecurity.com