Electronic Identity and Health Care Reform

On Wednesday August 12 I went to the DICE career fair and updated my profiles for short term and long term employment. Overall my strategy is Java Programming for short term and Biomedical Informatics for the long term as it fits into the health care system and health care reform, particularly enablement of genomic information in second generation patient controlled electronic medical records. Next I have turned my attention to the most important issue of this month of August, the pivotal month for the health care reform issue.

In my view there are three main components to the success of health care reform. Reform and reinvention of the health insurance industry, reengineering of hospital based care delivery, and the enablement of IT integration and services throughout the health care system. For the latter, one key element is the implementation of patient controlled electronic medical records. The barriers to creation and adoption of this model for self-directing a patient's care are security, privacy, and management of identity. This third component relates directly to what I have referred to as secrecy in the health care system (http://reform2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/secrecy-in-health-care-system.html), because identities have military or national security implications.

Today I have started a new blog entitled Under Cover -- Identity and its Implications at the appropriately entitled URL http://fogofdeceit.blogspot.com . Any examination of the issues related to the enablement of IT integration and services in the health care system must take this element into account. So I start from the point of view of someone who regularly uses the internet but without the benefit of any security clearances. Thus, there is no chance that I will reveal any secrets, military or otherwise.