Hi,

How serious is it really?

Is there anybody with a legal opinion?
I only have a laymans opinion about this ridiculous patent.

Gerard

ps:

A few snippets from en CEN/TC251 standard published in 1999.
CEN/TC251 ENV 13606:
1. Scope This European Prestandard specifies messages that enable  
exchange of electronic healthcare record informationbetween healthcare  
parties responsible for the provision of clinical care to an individual  
patient. These messages allow information from an electronic healthcare  
record held by one health professional to be sent to another  
healthprofessional. The messages specified by this European Prestandard  
can be used to convey:? a complete copy of a patient's record as stored  
in one information system; ? parts of a patient's record that form a  
logically sound extract or summary of that record;? parts of a  
patient's record used for updating a parallel record on another system.  
The primary purpose of these messages is to support the provision of  
care to individual patients. The availability ofconsistent, continuing  
clinical care, when and where it is needed, requires appropriate and  
unambiguous communication between clinical professionals. The messages  
specified by this European Prestandard are designed to meet  
thisrequirement by enabling users of different clinical information  
systems to exchange electronic healthcare record information.  
Implementation of these messages will therefore assist the maintenance  
of timely and appropriate patientrecords.

With a definition of Health care party:
--  3.39. healthcare party. Organisation or person involved in the  
direct or indirect provision of healthcare services to an individual or  
to a population. --
Met andere woorden. Hetgeen functioneel beschrven staat is omvat in de  
CEN voornorm voor het EPD.

The concept "Template" is mentioned.
Any input screen is a template. And before 1999 this concept was  
defined  and in use.

As far as Access Control is concerned
Part 3 of the CEN/TC251 ENV 13606 is about the expression of elements  
needed for access control.

1 Scope This European prestandard specifies data objects for describing  
rules for distribution or sharing of electronic healthcare records in  
whole or in part. This European prestandard establishes general  
principles for the interaction of these data objects with other  
components and mechanisms within an electronic healthcare record  
application, thereby controlling the distribution of electronic  
healthcare records in whole or in part. This European prestandard  
establishes ways of creating information with associated security  
attributes. This European prestandard defines a methodology for  
constructing rules built from defined data objects, capable of being  
implemented using a range of techniques, to effect the control of  
sharing of electronic healthcare record data. This European prestandard  
establishes principles that allow security policies to be implemented  
and incorporated in order to ensure the safe use of the data. This  
European prestandard specifies a method for constructing an Access Log,  
that can be rendered human viewable, that records distribution of the  
data to which a Distribution Rule is attached. This European  
prestandard does not specify the mechanisms and functions that take  
part within the negotiation procedure and therefore fully automate the  
data distribution process. This European prestandard does not specify  
the mechanisms and functions that will allow some systems to  
continuously reauthenticate the data communication session and monitor  
its integrity. This European prestandard allows the sharing of records  
distributed in space, time or responsibility. This European prestandard  
does not specify  the data objects and packages represented in an  
Information System.

At this moment I have no time to browse further.
But on the website of NIST more is to be found about Role based Access  
published before 1999.
And persons like Bernd Blobel and Ross Anderson wrote about security in  
health care


gf

--  <private> --
Gerard Freriks, arts
Huigsloterdijk 378
2158 LR Buitenkaag
The Netherlands

+31 252 544896
+31 654 792800
On 23 Nov 2004, at 03:29, Tim Churches wrote:

> There is some concern here in Australia over a patent application  
> lodged by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia over some rather generic  
> features of EHRs. These concerns are reported here:
>
> http://australianit.news.com.au/common/print/ 
> 0,7208,11467621%5E15319%5E%5Enb%20v%5E15306,00.html
>
> or here:
>
> http://snipurl.com/atst
>
> The application has been lodged under the international PCT (patent  
> co-operation treaty), and it appears that country level applications  
> have been lodged in at least the UK, Canada and the US, as well as  
> Australia.
>
> At a glance, there would not appear to be much in the way of novelty  
> in the claims, and several groups here in Australia plan to lodge  
> objections to the application. Others may wish to object to the  
> applications in their own countries. If anyone can suggest clear prior  
> art which was published before April 2002, and ideally before April  
> 2001, then please let me know (or post details to this list so the  
> prior art can be shared around).
>
> The details of the patent application, and a related one filed on the  
> same date, are as follows:
>
> "METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SHARING PERSONAL HEALTH DATA" can be found here:
>
> http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc? 
> CY=ep&LG=en&F=4&IDX=WO02073456&DB=EPODOC&QPN=WO02073456
>
> or here:
>
> http://snipurl.com/atol
>
> Click on the tabs at the top to see the details of the patent claims.
>
> The details of the CR Group application for "METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR  
> SECURE INFORMATION" can be found here:
>
> http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO02073455&F=0
>
> or here:
>
> http://snipurl.com/ator
>
> The filing dates for both are 14 march 2002, with earliest priority  
> dates of 14 March 2001.
>
> Just to whet your appetite, here is Claim 1 of the Pharmacy Guild  
> application:
>
> "CLAIMS : 1. A method for a health care provider to obtain personal  
> health data relating to a consumer, the method comprising the steps of  
> : the consumer causing personal health data to be stored in a secure  
> repository, said repository requiring authentication of the consumer's  
> identity before the consumer is provided access to the repository; the  
> consumer selecting items of personal health data to share and  
> identifying a health care provider, or class of health care providers,  
> to whom access will be provided for those items of personal health  
> data; a health care provider providing authentication of their  
> identity to the consumer's secure repository and being provided access  
> to those items of personal health data of the consumer for which the  
> health care provider has been identified for sharing; the health care  
> provider using the personal health data of the consumer to determine  
> health care advice or the provision of a health care service for the  
> consumer; and the health care provider recording details of the  
> consultation and the advice or service provided to the consumer in the  
> secure repository of health data of the consumer."
>
> If this patent issues, we (or our govts) may find ourselves having to  
> pay royalties to the Pharmacy Guild of Australia to use any EHR  
> applications which meet this description, or having to challenge the  
> patent in court (expensive). Hence there is value in demolishing it  
> with prior art in the application stage - assuming that it survives  
> the examination phase (which it shouldn't, but as we know, the US  
> patent office seems willing to approve a patent for just about  
> anything, no matter how obvious or well-known the idea is, and the  
> Australian patent office managed to issue an innovation patent for the  
> wheel a few years ago...true!).
>
> Tim C
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 7884 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: 
<http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20041124/c2f5c2f3/attachment.bin>

Reply via email to