In an effort to broaden interoperability use cases for secure health data transmission, DirectTrust has purchased the assets of health IT consortium and certification body SAFE Identity, including its Trust Framework. DirectTrust has launched a new branch called DirectTrust Identity, which will house the SAFE Identity Trust Framework, which provides healthcare identity assurance and cryptography.
- Dependant: New and current members of both organizations will rely on DirectTrust to manage policies and infrastructure supporting secure data exchange.“Our acquisition of SAFE Identity’s assets is truly a groundbreaking moment for DirectTrust and the entire electronic healthcare information industry,” Scott Stuewe, president and CEO of DirectTrust said in a press release. “SAFE Identity and DirectTrust are like-minded organizations with memberships that share common goals.”
- Framework: “Both the DirectTrust and SAFE Identity trust framework communities seek to enable safe and secure transactions through the use of identity-assured credentials backed by a public key infrastructure and consensus-based policies,” Stuewe continued. DirectTrust’s expanded ecosystem will widen the breadth of healthcare stakeholders the organization serves while allowing the opportunity for new use cases where the two groups connect, Stuewe said.
- Communication: Members will now be able to communicate with federal agencies about document signing and system authentication. Medical device security and identification universally trusted consumer healthcare credentials, and identity assurance and security for the pharmaceutical supply chain is all possible use cases (DSCSA).
- Identification: “SAFE sustained a pedigree in the digital identity assurance and government interoperability spaces by maintaining one of the longest-standing Trust Frameworks in healthcare,” said Kyle Neuman, managing director at SAFE Identity and incoming director of Trust Framework development at DirectTrust.“With its incorporation into DirectTrust, the SAFE community is about to embark on a new chapter to remain in lockstep with the progress being made in the realm of digital identity across healthcare,” Neuman continued.
- Expansion: The goal of DirectTrust’s expanded ecosystem is to support modern identity challenges such as patient matching, clinical research, medical IoT, and meeting the requirements of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act, Neuman noted. Both organizations credit their initial existence to federal collaborations and retain important relationships and roles with the federal agencies.
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