AUSTRALIA (ZDNet Australia) - "The issues such as privacy are important, but these need to be balanced with the benefits you gain from electronic health records," IT security specialist and Research Scientist with the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC) at the Queensland University of Technology, Dean Povey said.
There has been a general ambivalence towards PKI in the health industry according to Povey, with recent reports claiming that the technology will be unable to protect the privacy of the public's health records online.
The reports follow the Federal Government's scheme to facilitate in the rollout of PKI through its Health Insurance Commission (HIC).
PKI involves users being issued with a digital key which is activated once a log-in is successfully completed.
However, "what the reports fail to recognise is while a potential for misuse exists, the benefits of such a scheme far outweigh any potential risks that may occur," Povey said.
Povey believes the real issue is not in the technology itself but the policy implemented by government, which needs to reflect privacy concerns.
"You can't do [electronic health records] without being secure. PKI, is the only real possible way of doing it," he said.
According to Povey, the benefits of PKI infrastructure are that health records can be accessed across general practitioners and hospitals securely, enabling doctors to have a continuity of medical histories on which to base decisions.
"Having records of your health throughout entire life is impossible in paper-based record system," he said.
Furthermore, electronic records provide much more knowledge than paper-based records about who's accessing information through the use of private keys.
"With PKI, there is a stronger guarantee that the person you think is accessing the information, actually is," Povey said.
Although Povey believes the privacy issues surrounding the implementation of health records online are valid, if the systems are designed effectively, then the benefits will be achieved.
"This technology can work, they're important issues to raise when developing systems, security specialists are well aware of them," he said.
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