The role of Cloud Computing and Identity & Access Management in Medical Engineering
Prior to understanding the role played by Identity & Access Management in Medical Engineering as well as the synergies between both, we need to have a closer look at today’s medical engineering sector in the context of digitalization.
Modern-day Medical Technology has evolved to eradicate boundaries set by physical worlds. A doctor is now more accessible to a patient living thousands of miles away by way of cloud-based connected applications. Similarly, a patient is not restricted to go to a hospital for initial tests, but instead, they can walk into kiosks equipped with newly invented micro-devices specialized for a certain scope of tests. Even more, many such types of equipment are available for off-the-shelf purchase so that customers have a micro clinic at home to perform small daily tests. Such innovations are not only solving todays’ issues in healthcare, like lack of medical infrastructure and staff but are also key drivers for personalized healthcare.
All these require a robust cloud-based framework to securely and swiftly transmit information. With several modern scalable cloud technologies, this has become seamless. Data security and privacy protection become key, secure storage and transmission of data is a crucial bit in such large solution architectures, be it patient data or data of medical equipment.
In the same context Identity & Access Management comes into play. The collaboration between different players, be it patients, doctors, and MedTech partners, is becoming a key component in modern and personalized healthcare. To enable the users for such close cooperation, an Identity & Access Management is crucial, not only do users expect a single sign-on experience across various tasks and systems that they have access to. Furthermore, in the context of processing sensible user and patient data, it is important to leverage security features like multi-factor-authentication, be it mandatory or adaptive, as a response to fraudulent activities. In that aspect, a user may also have multiple roles in the whole workflow and hence once the circumstances changes and the user switches to an application or role with access to sensible data, a step-up authentication might be required, to achieve a strong user authentication and grant access.
The management of data often goes hand in hand with the management of consent, which can be anything from consent to terms of use or data protection, to consent to the transfer of data, e.g., in the course of a transfer to laboratories or other partners. Managing the consents of users along with the identity is useful and enables a unified view of users, as well as the best control of authorization to data and applications.
Identity & Access Management becomes even more important, since it no longer only focuses on people, but also extends to a wide variety of devices, from mobile devices to micro-devices and IoT sensors & actuators. In addition, the management of healthcare data associated with an identity or user, be it gathered at home in a “micro-clinic” or at the regular visit to a doctor or laboratory, is the foundation and source for personalized healthcare. Thus, making Identity & Access Management a key component and game-changer in modern medical engineering.
cidaas, the European cloud identity and access management system from Widas ID GmbH, delivers an out-of-the-box solution for federated identities, single sign-on, and multi-factor authentication. With cidaas, companies create a unique user identification and maximum security across all channels. Based on the standards OAuth2.0, OpenID and its “Everything is an API” architecture, cidaas can be seamlessly integrated into any software landscape and scales effortlessly up to many millions of users.
To know more about cidaas in medical engineering have a look at:
cidaas for healthcare
The most important reasons for using a CIAM solution to comply with regulatory and legal requirements in the Healthcare industry have been summarized in this fact sheet.
CIDAAS ID VALIDATOR FOR MOBILITY
A leading global supplier of complete systems and products for implant dentistry and implant-borne restorations wanted to redefine its customer approach in order to adapt itself to the digital age.