DETERMINATION OF USER REQUIREMENTS FOR THE SECURE COMMUNICATION OF ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD INFORMATION

Health professionals need to have accurate patient data in order to ma ke the right diagnosis and to give an optimal treatment, In many cases , the 'medical' record: whether in electronic form or paper form is di stributed over several health care providers and health care enterpris es. Technically, there are several ways to provide access to remote re cord information or parts thereof. Legislation however puts restrictio ns on the communication of personal information in order to protect th e privacy of the patient. This paper gives an overview of requirements and constraints when communicating electronic medical record informat ion and summarises the findings of the SEMRIC project in determining r equirements from a number of practical cases. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scienc e Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.