A Simultaneous Key Generation Technique For Health Information Exchange (HIE) Based On Existing Patients' Credentials

Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems are being widely used by various healthcare providers due to the benefits these systems offer. Previous work proposed to offer health information exchange involves issuing digital certificates for the patients and requires special hardware, like smart cards, to be present with the patients at the time of service. In this paper, we propose a technique that generates a symmetric session key simultaneously at two different healthcare providers based on the existing patients' credentials. The technique allows requesting healthcare providers to generate the correct key only if patients are present and entering their credentials. A unique key is generated based on patient credentials and a new key is created for each health information exchange to maintain the privacy of patients.