Email Security - Pilot Development

Studying PKI usability in the context of health care

 

At the University of Wisconsin, The Integrated Advanced Information Management System (IAIMS) initiative is striving to develop an information infrastructure to serve the needs of the medical school, school of pharmacy, school of nursing, health sciences library, veterinary school, and college of engineering. By integrating the information resources, efficient sharing from remote locations will improve communication in patient care and research initiatives. Because WI-IAIMS involves departments with health and research related concerns, any information containing associations to patients is highly sensitive and requires protection to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity during any transmissions of information.

Under the WI-IAIMS initiative, the Department of Family Medicine (DFM) determined the need for secure electronic mail to protect communication between providers over email. Despite email's conveniences and accessibility, email with the existing system is not equipped with a security system to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, or authenticity of the communication. In a joint effort between WI-IAIMS and the PKI lab at UW-Madison, a study was conducted to gather information about provider email in three areas: usability concerns, technical comprehension of the current email system, and liability requirements governed by patient privacy issues. From these findings, technical requirements were determined to help develop a pilot security system to protect email at DFM.

 

 

Investigators - IAIMS

Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD
Kelly Kwiatkowski, MA
David Simmons - DFM