Michigan Healthcare Information Exchange Adopts Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Framework

Regional program leverages four levels of identity assurance and certified identity services from Kantara Initiative to advance trusted, secure and privacy-respecting applications for healthcare providers and patients
Washington DC, September 24, 2009 – Kantara Initiative, a global identity community working to solve harmonization challenges among enterprise, Web 2.0 and Cloud applications and services, today announced that the South East Michigan Health Information Exchange (SEMHIE) has adopted the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Framework (IAF) as its open trust framework for ensuring policy interoperability across identity-enabled healthcare applications and services. The SEMHIE will require organizations participating in the regional healthcare exchange to have identity services certified within the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Certification Program. 
“We are adopting the standardized Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Framework because it has been developed by industry leaders representing the global healthcare, government, financial services and telecom sectors to meet open trust framework requirements based on four levels of identity assurance,” said Helen Hill with SEMHIE and member of the Healthcare Reform Committee for HIMSS. “Hospitals and regional healthcare providers participating in SEMHIE as credential service providers will be certified by Kantara Initiative to demonstrate they have met identity assurance criteria, ensuring policy interoperability across the region and the highest degree of security and privacy for patients.”
The SEMHIE is a multi-stakeholder initiative dedicated to delivering the promise of integrated health information exchange throughout Southeast Michigan. When successfully deployed, SEMHIE will enhance patient care, quality and safety; increase effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare delivery: and reduce healthcare costs. More information about SEMHIE is available at http://www.semhie.org/
“With the adoption of four levels of identity assurance and certified identity services from Kantara Initiative, the SEMHIE is at the forefront of successfully addressing the policy interoperability challenges involved in establishing trusted identity federations across industries and sectors,” said Frank Villavicencio, executive director, NetStar-1, Inc. and chair of the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Work Group.
 About the Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Certification Program
The Kantara Initiative Identity Assurance Certification program certifies that identity services have met business and policy criteria for each of the four identity assurance levels outlined in the technology agnostic IAF. Certified identity services eliminate the need for organizations to “reinvent the wheel” each time they need to assess the risk of accepting identity credentials from an outside party. More information is available at http://tinyurl.com/r6le4r.

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