Hierarchy Similarity Analyser-An Approach to Securely Share Electronic Health Records

Abstract

Health professionals need an access to various dimensions of Electronic Health Records (EHR). Depending on technical constraints, each organization defines its own access control schema exhibiting heterogeneity in organizational rules and policies. Achieving interoperability between such schemas often result in contradictory rules thereby exposing data to undue disclosures. Permitting interoperable sharing of EHRs and simultaneously restricting unauthorized access is the major objective of this paper. An Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML)-based framework, Hierarchy Similarity Analyser (HSA), is proposed which fine-grains access control policies of disparate healthcare organizations to achieve interoperable and secured sharing of EHR under set authorizations. The proposed framework is implemented and verified using automated Access Control Policy Testing (ACPT) tool developed by NIST. Experimental results identify the users receive secured and restricted access as per their authorizations and role hierarchy in the organization.