A Warning on Software Interoperability in e-Health

Abstract

Software interoperability refers to how a software system can be used with other software systems. One of the most relevant challenges in 2017 to reach software interoperability in e-health is to develop a standardized way of identifying patients. The recent Regulation (EU) N. 910/2014, eIDAS for short, enables secure mutual identification between citizens and public authorities, and this is achieved by a cooperative approach defined by the eIDAS Interoperability Architecture. In this paper, we analyze this software architecture and show that it may results in a privacy problem, if the identification procedure regards a health service. Moreover, a solution to this problem is proposed, which is based on a modification of the protocol defined by the eIDAS Interoperability Architecture to reach the goal of the anonymity of the service requested by the patient.