Recently our Corporate General Manager, Mike,  was picking up his dry cleaning and the clerk asked him what he did for a living. Mike – ever the salesman – launched into a discussion about our personal health record, the SHAPE PHR™. The clerk’s immediate reaction was, “That sounds like something I could use. But, how is medical information kept private and secure when using the Internet to transmit it?”

This clerk’s question is the key question consumers and medical providers need to ask when evaluating PHRs. Privacy and security of medical information is paramount if people and doctors are to have confidence in using a PHR. All the other features and benefits of PHRs pale in comparison to this issue.

Let’s face it, PHRs are, at the simplest, electronic file cabinets and file folders. They are a means to store and organize your health information. A comparison of PHRs will find different bells and whistles but, the end result is storage and organization.

The SHAPE PHR was build around the concept of privacy and security. We use defense-grade cryptography far exceeding the financial standards comparison that many firms rely upon. And, our security and cryptography take the extra measure to protect information both in transit and at rest . Our competitors also make efforts to be secure but their efforts are short of ours.

Most every PHR is also protected by a user log-in and password. I don’t know about everyone but, I get kind of lazy about some of my password selections and use the same ones or ones that are simple for me to remember. I also keep a handy list of them so I can get to them when I need them. As a creature of habit, most people will use passwords that aren’t very robust. To counter this and make our SHAPE PHR security the best in the marketplace, we have embedded the SHAPE PHR with the security of our biometric match-on-card, the SHAPE Card™ as the preferred means to access the SHAPE PHR.

The SHAPE Card requires that the PHR owner insert their SHAPE Card in a reader and then prove their identity by having their fingerprint matched to the algorithm on the card. These steps launch the PHR. As importantly, when the person is done using their PHR – perhaps at the doctor’s office – they pull out their card and the screen and their personal and private medical information is no longer accessible!

So, you have the convenience of using a user name and password at home. However, when accessing your PHR at the doctor’s office or another location such as a hospital emergency room and where a Smart Card reader is present, you have the added protection that only you can access your medical information by presenting both your card and your fingerprint.

Oh, and did I mention that we don’t keep a database of fingerprints of our PHR owners? Only a computer algorithm representing the fingerprint is stored on the card and matched through the magic of computer technology.

To answer Mike’s clerk at the dry cleaners – “You can’t be more secure than the SHAPE PHR!”

SHAPE – Secure information at the tip of your finger.