Results of European projects enabling secure regional, national and international health care networks

Based on the work of the ISHTAR, the TRUSTHEALTH1, the EUROMED-ETS and the MEDSEC project funded by the European Commission, the synergetic results of these different projects in providing a security infrastructure for the te st environment of an oncological network will be demonstrated. The ISHTAR project investigated security issues in Health Care Establishmen ts (HCE). It provides guidance for threat and risk analysis, and defines a schema for specification and implementation of appropriate security service s and mechanisms to respond to the HCE security requirements of both commun ication and application security concepts. The TRUSTHEALTH1 project dealt with specification and Lest implementation o f basic security services and mechanisms based on Health Professional Cards (HPC) and Trusted Third Party (TTP) services. Within the EUROMED-ETS project, the security solution has been extended to the Internet environment and WWW tools, successfully creating an Internet-b ased international TTP structure between the universities of Athens, Calabr ia, and Magdeburg. Finally, in the MEDSEC project the specification and implementation of a ge neric EDI security solution has been delivered to provide secure communicat ion between applications and sites. In the ongoing TRUSTHEALTH2 project, the results of all these projects will be implemented in a real environment of cancer care.