T Geisbe | PubMed Health

PubMed2004

Patient data security in the DICOM standard.

The DICOM committee added the section "Security Profiles" to the DICOM standard, in order to provide the opportunity of safe communication between health care system partners. Data complying with the DICOM standard--e.g. pictures, signals or reports of examinations can be provided with one or more digital signatures. Attention should be paid to the fact that these possibilities of the DICOM standard are available or can be supplied subsequently by new acquisitions of radiological modalities. The required information to check these prerequisites are given.

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PubMed2003

[Does the digital signature of the DICOM standard meet the requirements of German law?].

The DICOM standard offers the possibilities to generate electronic signatures, valid according to German laws. This enhances the reliability of the correlation between image and patient data. However, only so called qualified electronic signatures--conveniently issued by an accredited supplier--are permissible and not rejectable as evidence in German jurisdiction and are completely equivalent to the handwritten signatures. These qualified electronic signatures can be executed only by individuals, whereas the former are not applicable to technical apparatus like image generating modalities. In consequence, a modality is able to provide its pictures with a "common or advanced signature" solely. This limits the use of the digital signature of the DICOM standard for further applications, e.g. the verifiability within the teleradiology.

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