Establishment of a Globally Scalable Touchless Biometric-derived Unique Health Identifier (UHID) Model and Architecture
In the United States healthcare system, challenges surrounding patient identification, interoperable exchange of health records, and complexities in providing a robust security system capable of protecting patient identifiable information (PII) have been widely documented. Consequences include incomplete and inaccurate electronic patient health records, redundant expensive medical tests caused by the lack of interoperability between healthcare institutions, and a significant amount of cases of medical fraud because of inadequate identification mechanisms. To date, no proven solution exists to offer consistent and accurate identification for users within the United States Healthcare system. Past literature describes techniques of developing algorithms used to match duplicate patient records and merge into a single record, but results have not been met with high accuracy. Biometric identification research has been conducted extensively, however there have been no successful attempts to link a scalable National Patient Identifier (NPI) to a user’s biometric output.
I propose a new technique of user identification in healthcare by developing algorithms capable of establishing a Unique Health Identifier (UHID) based on the user’s fingerprint biometric, with the utilization of facial-recognition as a secondary validation step before health records can be accessed. Biometric captures may be completed using standard smartphones and Web cameras in a touchless method. Patients and healthcare professionals no longer need to remember complex passwords or worry about their login credentials being stolen as they authenticate using biometrics. Interoperability and security mechanisms are developed and configured to provide an end-to-end accurate national identification and health data exchange.
The proposed solution is called UMBRELLA or Unique Medical Biometric Enforcement of Legitimate and Large-scale Authentication. I present a series of experiments to demonstrate the formation of an accurate and consistent UHID and reveal the scalability and security of the identification solution through a large-scale distributed network, with a developed use case to illustrate the functionality and accuracy of our research. My plan is to further develop the UMBRELLA solution in hopes of dramatically reducing the complexities associated with user misidentification in healthcare and enhance the interoperability and security mechanisms affiliated with health data exchange, resulting in lowering healthcare costs, enhancing population health monitoring and improving patient-safety.
Publications:
- Hembroff, G. “Improving Patient Safety, Health Data Accuracy, and Remote Self-management of Health through the Establishment of a Biometric-based Global UHID”. Proceedings of Global Telehealth Conference (GT’16). 2016. Auckland, New Zealand.
- Hembroff, G. “Improving Personal and Population Health Analytics using Biometric-based UHID over Unlike Systems”. Proceedings of the Health Informatics New Zealand Conference (HINZ’16). 2016. Auckland, New Zealand.