Toward secure distribution of electronic health records: quantitative feasibility study on secure E-mail systems for sharing patient records

• HIT Description: electronic communications; secure email system (identity-based encryption Ð IBE) More info...
  
• Purpose of Study: evaluate the feasibility of IBE as compared to public key infrastructure (PKI)
  
• Years of study: Not Available
  
• Study Design: cross-sectional
  

• Settings: 12 volunteers (Japan) including 3 physicians, one dentist, one nurse, on laboratory technologist, 3 medical researchers and 3 medical students
• Intervention: Web-based questionnaires were administered to volunteers after they utilized Microsoft Outlook Express with PKI or IBE to send and receive letters of reference to evaluate perceptions regarding security and ease of use
• Evaluation Method: Questionnaire analysis using the analytic hierarchy process
• Description: IBE does not require obtaining a public key of the receiver before sending email. A key server distributes the public parameters for all users and issues a private parameter to each user. A sender encrypts a message with a public key and the receiver decrypts the message with a private key.