Jericho Systems Software Supports Standards-Based SAMHSA-VA Healthcare Privacy Pilot

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jericho Systems Corporation announced that its flagship EnterSpace Decisioning System software was successfully used in a standards-based pilot demonstration of health information access control conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in September.

“This pilot is an important step in showing how fine-grained access control of electronic healthcare data can be customized to meet the needs of government healthcare organizations and individual patients”

Presented at a Health Level Seven (HL7) Working Group Meeting in Baltimore, MD, on behalf of the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and based on standards identified in the Data Segmentation for Privacy (DS4P) initiative of the Standards and Interoperability (S&I) Framework, the Phase I pilot demonstrated a use case in which patient information sent by SAMHSA to the VA was constrained according to release policies established in patient consent directives. The S&I effort grew out of recommendations published in a 2010 health IT report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

The pilot demonstration “push” ecosystem reflected these elements:

Consent Directive Management: Patient consent directives (personalized privacy policies to guide the authorized release of information) were created and managed to reflect real-life scenarios of patient authorization and restrictions.
Access Control Service: Using eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML), Jericho Systems’ standards-based EnterSpace technology enforced privacy policies and made release authorization decisions based on patient consent directives and policies of the receiving organization.
Sending Organization: SAMHSA “pushed” electronic health records (EHRs) that incorporate Health Commerce System (HCS) tagging and Cross-Enterprise Document Media Interchange (XDM) metadata and packaging to the receiving organization, the VA.
Receiving Organization: The VA received EHRs from SAMHSA after the data had been filtered by the Access Control Service according to patient directives and clinical and organizational rules.

“This pilot is an important step in showing how fine-grained access control of electronic healthcare data can be customized to meet the needs of government healthcare organizations and individual patients,” said David Staggs, CTO of Jericho Systems.

The SAMHSA-VA Phase I pilot demonstrated the feasibility of sharing patients’ medical records while preventing unauthorized disclosure of sensitive substance abuse treatment. EnterSpace Decisioning Service software provided the policy decision point that enforced access control policies and recognized metadata tagging to indicate confidentiality, sensitivity, and handling instructions.

Brynn Mow, CEO of Jericho Systems, said, “With EnterSpace technology, providers and patients both benefit from greater control over the flow of sensitive healthcare data. Our access control supports organizational and jurisdictional privacy requirements, detailed audits, and patient privacy.”

About Jericho Systems Corporation

Dallas-based Jericho Systems Corporation provides enterprise-scalable access control, decisioning, and privilege management solutions, with its largest customers representing the healthcare, Department of Defense, intelligence, and homeland security communities. Jericho specializes in fine-grained, policy-based data filtering technology that supports dynamic, attribute-based access control (ABAC).

Jericho's flagship EnterSpace® Decisioning Service (ESDS) software and related professional services facilitate information security, regulatory compliance, quality, and efficiency. ESDS improves collaboration and leverages the value of data by enabling timely and secure sharing of sensitive information between internal groups and with external organizations. To meet the unique needs of the healthcare market, Jericho’s EnterSpace Exchange™ enhances ESDS with additional components that control the flow of information in healthcare applications while ensuring patient privacy. The EnterSpace Exchange PatientPortal was recognized as a “Best Privacy Technology of 2012” at the Second International Summit on the Future of Health Privacy.

EnterSpace Technology® is covered by United States patents 7,779,247, 7,792,828 and 8,060,504. For more information or to arrange a product demonstration, please call 972-231-2000, email info@jerichosystems.com, or visit www.jerichosystems.com.