Integrating smart card access to Web-based medical information systems

This paper examines the application of smart cards in the development of distributed medical information systems. The pocket mobility and security features of smart cards make them an ideal medium for storing the critical medical records of individual. However, the lack of interoperability and support for distributed operation has limited the development and usage of smart cards in a networked environment. This paper highlights the benefits of combining the World Wide Web and smart card technologies to support the development of highly robust health information system, while leveraging on the rich benefits of the Web technology. In particular, we describe an approach of using the WebCard service model as a common interface to communicate and access the medical records residing in a smart card that seamlessly integrates to existing web infrastructure. Importantly, by employing HTTP as the baseline protocol to access information on the smart card, WebCard promotes the use of de facto standard web browsers as the common client user interface. The initial implementation of the framework and development of a case example of a web-based medical information site have demonstrated the feasibility of the concept of WebCard.